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.