Abstract
Permafrost is sensitive to climate change. The last decades, permafrost warming has been reported worldwide and the trend is amplified in the Arctic. Permafrost degradation can severely affect ground and infrastructure stability due to deepened active layer, ice loss and increased (sub)surface water availability, that may lead to thaw subsidence and enhanced gravity-driven slope processes. Svalbard contains critical modern infrastructure (MI) and invaluable cultural heritage (CH) sensitive to changing permafrost conditions. Threats to the MI structure health can have a direct impact on the safety of Svalbard residents, and long-term consequences on the research and economical activities in the archipelago. In addition, there are 4590 CH sites officially registered in Svalbard, including buildings, human graves, and remnants of installations from the whaling, hunting, trapping, mining and scientific activities, until the end of World War II. The regional and local authorities, such as the Governor of Svalbard, the Longyearbyen Community Council and the Norwegian Directorate
for Cultural Heritage, are responsible for MI/CH preservation and climate change adaptation (CCA). These stakeholders draw on the expertise of scientists from diverse fields to provide novel datasets and risk indicators that guide the design of effective CCA measures.
In this context, the Fram Centre PermaRICH project started in 2023. PermaRICH aims to assess the risks related to terrain movement in inhabited permafrost landscapes and the deformation of MI/CH in and around Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund (Central and Western Svalbard). The past years, we have focused on mapping the user needs and current policies for hazard/risk management in Svalbard, and applying a wide set of field/in-situ methods and satellite remote sensing techniques to map, monitor and model ground disturbances from permafrost thawing and their consequences on ground and structure stability. We generated maps of terrain movement using Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) and exploited the results to improve and upscale existing geomorphological maps. The results are used to assess the geohazard susceptibility in the study areas. We also modelled projected ground and infrastructure settlements and consequences on selected MI/CH structures in Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund. In parallel, we are measuring the ground and infrastructure deformation in the areas using InSAR and in-situ geodetic displacement time series. We are also acquiring ground temperature data in newly drilled boreholes.
In 2025, we are working on integrating the findings from the mapping, monitoring and modelling activities, to assess the hazard, vulnerability and risk of the MI/CH sites in the two areas. In this contribution, we will describe and exemplify how we generate permafrost-related geohazard susceptibility maps, and derive hazard scores based on the geomorphological map and the InSAR ground surface displacements. We will discuss the vulnerability assessment based on structure type and properties. Our final objective is to provide a qualitative risk estimate for the inventoried objects, as a product of the hazard and vulnerability scores.