Monthly Archives: June 2025

At the conclusion of the International Mountain Conference (IMC) in Innsbruck, a special session co-organized by Christian Huggel (EClim, University of Zurich), Mylène Jacquemart, and Jan Beutel brought together close to 20 presentations focused on the glacier avalanche disaster in Blatten, Switzerland. In less than four months, researchers from Switzerland, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and […]

Last month, EClim member Christian Huggel, together with Brian McArdell, led an intensive field-based course on Natural Hazard and Risk Analysis in Mountain Regions (GEO805) for University of Zurich students. After a day of learning how to simulate debris flows with RAMMS AG, the group headed to the Matter Valley (Herbriggen – St. Niklaus) for […]

While the Swiss village of Blatten has received global scientific and media attention after the devastating glacier collapse in May 2024, a similarly tragic—yet lesser-known—event occurred on August 5 in the Indian Himalayas. EClim member Simon Allen highlights the case of Dharali and Harsil, where more than 50 lives were likely lost. Unlike Blatten, no […]

EClim member Saeid Vaghefi, in collaboration with the SUREAL Lab, has released a powerful open-source library—ParseStudio—designed to tackle one of the most persistent challenges in AI: extracting structured content from PDFs. 📄 Why ParseStudio mattersPDFs are everywhere—from scientific publications and legal documents to datasets and reports. Extracting their content reliably is essential for building tools […]

We’re thrilled to share that AskWMO, a conversational AI tool co-developed by EClim member Saeid Vaghefi, has received the 2024 Royal Meteorological Society’s Award for Innovation! 🎉 Built in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), AskWMO demonstrates how AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) can support trustworthy, accessible, and transparent climate knowledge. 💡 What […]

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has unveiled an AI-powered tool that transforms fragmented data into actionable intelligence by tracking financial flows into early warning systems. This tool is a central part of WMO’s contribution to the UN 2.0 transformation, which emphasizes data-driven, high-impact solutions. 🔍 Why it mattersEarly warning systems are proven to save lives—but […]

EClim member Saeid Vaghefi was a featured speaker at Zalando’s Tech Talks in Zurich, co-hosted with AICamp Switzerland. The event brought together AI experts and innovators to explore cutting-edge applications—from virtual fashion to climate finance. 🔍 Talk highlight:In his session “AI for Climate Finance: Agentic Retrieval and Multi-Step Reasoning”, Saeid showcased how artificial intelligence can […]

Two months after the devastating ice-rock avalanche from Birch Glacier and Kleines Nesthorn destroyed large parts of the Swiss mountain village of Blatten, detailed reconstruction plans and cost estimates have been made public during a recent community assembly and press conference in Lötschental. 🔷 Key figures: The plans are ambitious and rely in part on […]

After months of dedicated work, the GLOFCA project has launched a fully refreshed platform to reflect the growing momentum behind its mission: reducing the risk of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) in four Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. EClim plays a central role in the project’s implementation through key contributions from Simon Allen, […]

As climate-related disasters intensify in mountain regions—from the Blatten avalanche in Switzerland to the recent glacial flood in Rasuwa/Purepu, Nepal—the need for robust early warning systems (EWS) and hazard monitoring is more urgent than ever. EClim’s Simon Allen joined an expert panel hosted by The Stimson Center on July 30, sharing insights on designing and […]