A study on ski groups size and their relationship to the risk of injury

Abstract

This paper addresses a novel topic in ski injury research - how a ski group size indicates the risk of ski injury. There is evidence in research literature that people ski in groups. However, the relationship between group size and the risk of injury has remained unexplored. Based on ski lift entrance data, we use the density-based clustering algorithm OPTICS to identify groups of skiers and discuss the advantages of using this algorithm. We show that the ski group size can be used to improve the identification of skiers who experience ski injury. The results of the identification of ski groups at Mt. Kopaonik Ski Resort in Serbia show that skiing alone is most susceptible to ski injury, while skiing in couples or in bigger groups reduces the risk of injury by 46%. In addition, it is confirmed that ski injuries are an early failure event phenomena. Based on the CHAID decision tree analysis, spending a small amount of time at the ski resort and skiing alone are associated with the: 6 times greater ski injury risk than the average ski injury risk.