A reliability-based method for taking into account snowfall return period in the design of buildings in avalanche-prone areas

For many natural hazards, design codes include simple approaches, based on semi-probabilistic methods, which allow the engineer to check the structural safety of the construction. This framework implements the socioeconomic optimization of the resources to be used to build construction works. At present no simple approaches have been formulated for snow avalanche hazard. Recent research focuses on fully probabilistic assessment of structural safety, aimed at the estimation of the failure probability of the element at risk. This strategy requires a large amount of data and complex simulation techniques. In order to propose the implementation of snow avalanche hazard into the framework of modern design codes, we suggest an approach based on different avalanche scenarios with different snowfall return periods depending on the consequences of failure of the designed construction.