Mountain Decision Observatory

The Mountain Decision Observatory (MDO) is a long-term environmental informatics and decision-support research programme that investigates how environmental observations can be transformed into actionable decision support for mountain users operating under uncertainty.
The programme seeks to identify:
• Which environmental variables contain useful predictive information about conditions elsewhere in the system (e.g. at a summit).
• How observations made at one location can be used to infer conditions at another.
• How environmental measurements can be combined with forecasts to improve the quality of operational decisions.
• Which observations reduce uncertainty most effectively.
• When environmental conditions become predictable or unpredictable.
• How experienced field users unconsciously interpret environmental cues.
• How decision-support systems can be developed from simple, low-cost observations.
The programme combines environmental measurement, atmospheric science, systems engineering, informatics, uncertainty analysis and human decision-making.
Rather than focusing solely on describing environmental conditions, the MDO is concerned with the pathway:
Environment → Observation → Information → Understanding → Decision → Outcome
Mountain environments serve as a practical field laboratory in which the relationships between observations, uncertainty and decision-making can be studied under real-world conditions.

The Mountain Decision Observatory is an attempt to answer a very simple question:
When you're standing at the bottom of a mountain, how much can you really know about what's happening at the top?
Every hillwalker has experienced one of these situations:
• It looks beautiful from the car park, but the summit is freezing, windy and in cloud.
• The forecast says conditions will be terrible, but the mountain turns out to be perfectly pleasant.
• Halfway up, something changes and you suddenly realise the summit is going to be a miserable place.
The MDO aims to understand which clues actually matter.
The project records:
• weather measurements,
• cloud observations,
• visibility,
• environmental conditions,
• forecast information,
at the start of a walk and again at the summit.
Over hundreds of mountain ascents, the data are analysed to determine:
• Which observations best predict summit conditions.
• Which warning signs indicate deteriorating weather.
• Which forecasts can be trusted.
• When conditions are likely to be worse than they appear.
• When a walker should seriously consider turning back.