ETH News

The landslide in Brienz (GR) in 2023 kept Switzerland on tenterhooks for weeks. Researchers from ETH Zurich, WSL and SLF used a model to provide a highly accurate blind prediction of where the sliding mass would come to rest. ETH Professor Johan Gaume explains how the model works and where its limitations lie.

In shaking our society to its core, says Jaboury Ghazoul, Covid-19 shows that we must adopt a far broader perspective to tackle the complex socio-ecological problems humanity faces.

We need to seize the opportunity for a unified global response to deforestation, land degradation, and climate change, says Jaboury Ghazoul.

ETH spin-off Adaptricity has developed a piece of software that can be used to analyse the increasingly intelligent power grids. It will soon be put to the entrepreneurial test, with sales of software licences set to begin this autumn.

Ingo Scholtes from the Chair of Systems Design has developed an analytical method that takes account of the chronological order of connections within networks. This not only makes it possible to more accurately identify links between topics on the internet, but also makes it easier to predict the spread of epidemics, for example.

For example, lay people think that the sickest patients and those on waiting lists should be treated first, while ethicists ¨C and to some degree medical professionals ¨C tend to have a different set of priorities. This is the conclusion of a study by ETH researchers investigating the principles that apply to the fair allocation of scarce medical resources.