An assessment of mountain hazards and risk-taking activities in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.

摘要

Human and economic costs associated with human activities in mountain regions have been increasing in Banff National Park (BNP) and in the Bow Valley (BV) in particular. Human activity in mountain environments inextricably juxtaposes humans and environment in a potentially deadly manner due in part to the plethora of natural hazards and their unpredictable nature but also due to the level of experience and decision making process of an individual or group. The combination of these factors determines the level of risk and vulnerability for humans, infrastructure, and ecosystems from various hazards, dangerous processes and human activity. Understanding the complex temporal and spatial relationship between landform, process, people, is thus critical to determining and mitigating anthropogenic risk and vulnerability to hazard in mountain regions.;This study looks at a new approach to assessing risk for humans from mountain hazards and risk-taking activities in BNP by analysis of death, injury, and non-injury incident reports. Additionally, this study incorporates a spatial and temporal analysis, including inter-annual and seasonal variations, of hazards. Hazards were identified and categorized in one of five hazard groups - animal, rockfall/icefall, recreation, mass movement processes, and snow avalanche and evaluated against high risk activities such as hiking, scrambling, skiing, bicycling, and climbing. The risk potential framework consists of assigning weighted ranks of 100, 1000, 10000, and 100000 based on the level of incident severity - no injury, minor injury, serious injury and fatality respectively. Risk potential is calculated using a variation of Blaikie's et al. (1994) risk equation, R = H x V → R =IRPn =(I ct t/Ti) / (Hc*Vp) * SWF which equates to ((incident probability) / (user population x hazard population)) x severity weighted rank (SWF). Annual and seasonal risk along with event counts were further analyzed to develop a set of hazard matrices (low, medium, considerable, high, and extreme) and a set of hazard maps for specific hazards and risk-taking activities spatially in BNP.