André Paixão
Modeling Boulder Grading Systems
Climbing is becoming a more popular sport. Although there are several climbing modalities and scaling systems, there is currently no standardized way to evaluate the difficulty parameters of a climb, making grading a subjective task. This thesis focuses on bouldering, a climbing modality and tries to (1) identify relevant factors that contribute to the evaluation of bouldering routes, (2) to identify methods of measurement, (3) to develop a grading system model, (4) to evaluate the model in indoor climbing walls and (5) to compare the grades generated by the suggested model with the original grades suggested by the route-setters.