Colorado Avalanche Information Center: Data Modeling & Saving Lives

One-third of all avalanche deaths in the United States occur in Colorado, and avalanches kill more people here than any other natural hazard. The Colorado Avalanche Warning Center began issuing public avalanche forecasts in 1973, which undoubtedly save many lives in our beautiful mountains each year.

Today these forecasts are made by the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC) which is housed within the Colorado Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The CAIC is a partnership between the DNR, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), and the Friends of the CAIC (FoCAIC)—a 501c3. Since 2018, Dojo4 has been a core technology partner of CAIC.

Over the years Dojo4 has worked extensively with the CAIC to migrate their website and databases from a standalone infrastructure to AWS, enabling greater scalability and reliability; we’ve migrated their existing image library from a disk-based solution to a cloud-based solution; we’ve created a backend infrastructure and API to support their mobile app; and we continue to provide feature updates and maintenance as needed.