SnowWatch: Snow Monitoring through Acquisition and Analysis of User-Generated Content

TL;DR

SnowWatch is a system that leverages user-generated photos and webcam images to monitor snow conditions in the Alps, combining environmental data collection with an engaging social platform.

Contribution

It introduces an integrated system that automatically acquires and analyzes visual content from the public for snow monitoring purposes.

Findings

Successful integration of social media and webcam data for snow monitoring

Development of a user-friendly web portal for data collection and engagement

Potential for real-time snow condition updates using public visual content

Abstract

We present a system for complementing snow phenomena monitoring with virtual measurements extracted from public visual content. The proposed system integrates an automatic acquisition and analysis of photographs and webcam images depicting Alpine mountains. In particular, the technical demonstration consists in a web portal that interfaces the whole system with the population. It acts as an entertaining photo-sharing social web site, acquiring at the same time visual content necessary for environmental monitoring.