Árni Jón Elíasson


For his contributions to the
understanding of atmospheric icing
and its effect on structures


Árni Jón Elíasson is a geographer with more than 40 years of professional experience in research and studies of the natural parameters of wind and ice load on exposed structures.

He is responsible for an icing research program for Icelandic power utilities that has continued since 1977. The research program resulted in a database with extremely long time series in a dense network of test spans. The program also includes a unique database built on the systematic recording of icing measures on overhead power lines in operation.

Data from the Icelandic research and field measurement program have been the subject of international publications and serve as a reference database for refining theoretical icing models, especially for wet snow accretion, as well as for improving international standards and design codes.

Mr. Elíasson has been actively participating in IWAIS for the last 30 years and, together with his colleagues, he has presented more than 25 scientific papers on atmospheric icing. He has also been active in other international activities, such as IEC and CIGRE.

He organized the 8th IWAIS Workshop held in Iceland in 1998 and chaired the IWAIS International Advisory Committee from 1998-2000. He also organized the 18th IWAIS Workshop in Reykjavik, the second in Iceland.