Abstract
In Europe and especially in France, there is a growing enthusiasm for outdoor sports and recreation. In the meantime, the risk of both severe and frequent injuries associated with active pursuits is acknowledged, especially in mountainous areas. The effectiveness of prevention must rely on detailed knowledge of typical circumstances and scenarios but thorough understanding of the mechanisms of accidentality remains limited by the fragmentation of sources and by mostly heterogeneous methodologies. This paper aims at giving insights on victims’ profiles, season, location, and circumstances of mountaineering accidents in the French Alps, through the study of rescue interventions data from 2008 to 2018. Thanks to the analysis of the exhaustive database of search and rescue interventions from the French mountain national police force, and while questioning its limitations, we strive to answer two questions: what are the characteristics of the hazardous situations leading to a rescue intervention in mountaineering? Among these situations, what are the characteristics that tend to make them more harmful?
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Acknowledgement
The Petzl foundation funded this research study. We thank the Technical Mountain Coordination Unity (UCTM: Unité de Coordination Technique Montagne) and the various centers for mountain rescue (PGHM) of the national police force, the NSOMS and the National School of Mountain Sports (ENSM) for providing the data and for their insights about data construction.
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Vanpoulle, M., Lefevre, B. & Soule, B. Mountaineering incidents in France: analysis of search and rescue interventions on a 10-year period (from 2008 to 2018). J. Mt. Sci. 18, 446–461 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-020-6208-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-020-6208-y