FLIXDATE - Floating Ski Data by GNSS

The FLIXDATE project intends to develop a demonstration system for alpine ski sport traffic analysis, traffic routing and collision avoidance on ski slopes. Detection of dangerous zones and management of ski traffic based on floating ski data lead to increased safety and traffic performance on ski slopes.

Short Description

Given the dramatic increase in ski lift capacities in recent years, the topic of skiing safety is of growing importance. Modern chair lifts are able to carry several thousands of people per hour resulting in a dramatically increased density of people on the slopes.

Skiers are also travelling at high and often uncontrolled speeds due to huge improvements in material and ski design, which has led to a sharp rise in the number of accidents, including many fatalities. The motivation of this project is therefore to reduce alpine skiing accidents significantly and to enhance comfort on slopes.

The collection of floating ski data is based on GNSS as a positioning source and smart phones for data acquisition and transmission. For this purpose the skiing resort provides the rental of preinstalled outdoor phones and the download of an application (app) onto private phones. In a later development stage additional features are added to attract users, for example a map of the skiing resort, evaluation of the personal skiing day and outdoor games.

The collected data is sent via WLAN hot spots to a central server where the data is stored in a database. For optimum position performance EDAS (EGNOS Data Access System) data are obtained via PANDAS (Positioning and Navigation Data Assistance Service) to augment the position solution and to obtain more accurate position and speed information. Once Galileo will be available, the system will benefit from the increased number of visible satellites since slopes are often north facing.

Data evaluations are used to mark geo-referenced areas within the skiing resort classified as high risk and to generate near real- time traffic information. This information can be used to secure dangerous zones and to guide skiers to non-crowded areas using information screens and electronic traffic signs, thus managing skier traffic throughout the skiing area.

Project Partners

Coordinator

TeleConsult Austria GmbH - Philipp Berglez

Partners

GeoMatica – Dipl.-Ing. Johannes Vallant
EDS EnergyData Software OG - Günther Abwerzger

Contact Address

TeleConsult Austria GmbH
Philipp Berglez
Rettenbacher Straße 22
A-8044 Graz
Tel.: +43 (316) 890971 - 14
E-mail: pberglez@tca.at
Web: www.tca.at