Introduction
============

AvaFrame is a cooperation between the Austrian Avalanche and Torrent Service
(Wildbach- und Lawinenverbauung; WLV) and the Austrian Research Centre for
Forests (Bundesforschungszentrum für Wald; BFW) within the Federal Ministry
Republic of Austria: Agriculture, Regions and Tourism (BMLRT).

Our mission is to develop an open source framework (licensed with the European
Union Public license (EUPL) ) for avalanche simulations which replicates and
simplifies current simulation procedures and models at the WLV and make them
accessible to the public domain.

Our aims are to make AvaFrame:

* applicable in an operational setting e.g. for hazard mapping or planning of
  mitigation measures within the WLV and civil engineering.
* extensible for scientific applications to be used to develop new methods,
  models and cover a wide range of scientific topics.
* easily usable and extendable by (inter-)national partners, academia and
  interested users.

AvaFrame is part of an BMLRT initiative to foster technological innovation within a strategic focus on the area of Austrian safety policies, digital innovations and climate mitigation strategies.

Information in German can be found on the `BMLRT Homepage <https://info.bmlrt.gv.at/themen/wald/wald-und-naturgefahren/wildbach--und-lawinenverbauung/kooperationen-zusammenarbeit/lawinenschutzvorsorgeprojekt.html>`_.

A summary of the latest advances of the project can be found on the
`Avaframe homepage <https://avaframe.org/>`_ web-page.

Feel free to contact us at our `matrix room <https://matrix.to/#/#public:matrix.avaframe.org>`_ if
you have any questions or suggestions. AvaFrame is in an early development phase
and all ideas and contributions are welcome!

If you want to cite our project, please use:

.. image:: https://zenodo.org/badge/281922740.svg
   :target: https://zenodo.org/badge/latestdoi/281922740