Digital Camcorder remote control Paolo Obert

Glaciers are a "natural polyvalent resource characterized by cultural, scientific, socio-economic and scenic attributes "(C. Smiraglia, President of the Italian Glaciological Committee) but also an element of potential natural risk.
From 2003, on the initiative of Space, Environment and Public Works councillorship of the Autonomous Region of Aosta Valley was set up "the Aosta Valley glacier direction cabin", operational at the Foundation Mountagna Sicura Courmayeur (Villa Cameron), which brings together the Alpine guides (Alpine Rescue and Union High Mountain Guide of Aosta Valley) and institutional contacts ARPA Aosta Valley, Italian Glaciological Committee and CNR - IRPI Turin. The aims of the glacier direction cabin are the coordination of monitoring glaciers initiatives, the programming of joint actions to safeguard them, the promotion of scientific knowledge acquired and interventions implemented.

In this context, we have activated, a trial, a system of continuous monitoring of seracs of the Mont Blanc through a system composed of a digital Camcorder remote control.

First example in Italy for the monitoring of hanging glaciers, the application is widely used in the canton of Valais, under the coordination of science prof. Martin Funk (ETH Zurich), one of the greatest specialist in the world in this field. The system is composed of a Camcorder that is able to "capture" images of a massif from a fixed point; these are transmitted by radio to headquarters Guides of Courmayeur and therefore sent, through the Internet, to the headquarters of the Foundation for storage and processing to obtain a continuous Photo report of the evolution of the front of seracs. It catalogues the real evolution of the same as their dynamics break; observation of these phenomena is possible to identify recurrent and common cases to the various hanging apparatuses and formulate forecasts of collapse, "reading" the territory in less empirical and more scientific way.

The implementation of digital Camcorder was awarded to the Company SI.PRO of Aosta Valley.
The installation was finished at the end of August 2005 near the Cresta east of Tour Ronde, region Col d'Entrèves.

The system of remote control consists of four parts: power supply through solar hybrid system - photovoltaic; capture images camera; radio antenna transmitter; unit receiving and processing data.