Introduction

CAAML (Canadian Avalanche Association Markup Language) is a standard for the electronic representation of information pertinent to avalanche safety operations. By building on existing Internet standards, CAAML expresses avalanche related information in a manner that can easily be shared over the World Wide Web. CAAML builds on the following two existing standards:

• Extensible Mark-up Language (XML): A general purpose markup language promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• Geographic Markup Language (GML): An XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to express geographic features

Purpose

The purpose of CAAML is to provide the definitions for the data file structure to support electronic exchange of avalanche related information. CAAML defines the structure and elements of observations types, specifies how locations are referenced, provides a mechanism for linking observations with each other and contains a method for associating external data files.

CAAML Working Committee

CAAML developments are guided by the CAAML Working Committee, which is composed of representatives from international stakeholders with a keen interest in the promotion of the electronic exchange of avalanche-related information.

The current members of the CAAML Working Committee include:

• Canadian Avalanche Association (founding member)
• Canadian Avalanche Centre (founding member)
• Parks Canada (founding member)
• European Avalanche Warning Services (founding member)
• Tyrolean Avalanche Warning Serivce (founding member)
• WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF (founding member)
• Associazione Interregionale Neve e Valanghe (AINEVA) (founding member)
• Colorado Avalanche Information Center (founding member)

The current terms of reference for the CAAML Working Committee can be viewed here.

Contact

Any inquiries about CAAML should be sent to Pascal Haegeli at
pascal (at) avisualanche (dot) ca.

Currently Supported Standards