ABOUT

AVISUALANCHE

PASCAL HAEGELI

AVISUALANCHE CONSULTING

Founded in 2003, Avisualanche Consulting aims to provide services that significantly improve avalanche safety in professional and recreational settings.

While avalanche safety initiatives in the past have primarily focused on engineering solutions and snow science research, Avisualanche Consulting believes that avalanche safety can only be significantly improved through a more comprehensive approach, which includes a better understanding of the decision-making process of backcountry travelers. An in-depth knowledge of the motivations, perceptions and decision-making processes of a given target audience allows new avalanche awareness initiatives to be specifically tailored to the current needs, which can make new programs much more effective.

Avisualanche Consulting offers a wide range of services to improve professional and recreational decision situations. In particular, we provide the following services:
  - Comprehensive Project Management
  - Research on Avalanche Phenomenon
  - Research on Decision Preferences and Risk Attitudes
  - Design and Implementation of Information Systems
  - Data Visualisation
  - Development of Teaching Material

While Avisualanche Consulting has historically focused its activities on the analysis of snow sports, the crucial issues identified are clearly not unique to avalanche safety. We believe that the methods we have developed are applicable to a much wider range of recreational settings.

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PASCAL HAEGELI, Principal

Pascal, a native Swiss, came to Canada in 1998 to pursue a doctorate in the Atmospheric Science Program at the University of British Columbia. With his love for the mountains and backcountry skiing, it is not much of a surprise that his research ended up in avalanche safety. For his doctoral thesis, Pascal examined large-scale avalanche activity patterns in order to improve the forecasting of avalanche cycles for large commercial operations and public avalanche bulletins.

Through his research at UBC and in close collaboration with avalanche professionals, Pascal became increasingly aware that the human factors of the decision-making process were at least as important as a good understanding of the avalanche phenomenon. Since his graduation in 2004, he has continued to comprehensively improve his understanding of the physical and human aspects of avalanche problems while working on various projects for the Canadian avalanche community. Pascal also had a teaching appointment at UBC in the fall of 2005.

In addition to his work with Avisualanche Consulting, Pascal is currently a SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School for Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University and a director of the Canadian Avalanche Association.

Click here to download my Curriculum Vitae.

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