Karakoram
Product Development Projects | + | Links: Website (Archive)
A resilience assessment of Pakistani villages to GLOFs
Glacial Lake Ouburst Floods (GLOFs) occur when high mountain glaciers move and the friction created causes the ice to melt. An accumulation of water is created, which puts pressure on the sides of the glaciers. When they break, the water is released causing flash floods, often heavily impacting the communities downstream. The project received two grants from the National Geographic: in 2016 and 2018 two scientific expeditions took place in the Karakoram Mountains of Northern Pakistan to gather data and increase community awareness. I was part of the project’s third phase (which was postponed due to the pandemic): I developed a prototype Early Warning System for GLOFs, based on Mesh Networking and low-cost hardware.
A concept mockup of the technical prototype (Ralph Reijs - 2020)
Outdoor Journal - Oliver Foster (2020)
Photo Credit: Tim Taylor (2018)
