| Summary: | Slope stability assessment can represent a highly complex topic of investigation, requiring a considerable amount of field information in order to provide consistent predictions or to reconstruct historical events. In the Arctic regions, additional structural related components should be integrated into the stability analysis, due to the unique features encountered on the sites. A relevant influence can be connected to the active layer development starting from the end of freezing season until the final part of thawing period. The combination of thawed soil with significant infiltration events, in the form of powerful rainstorms or prolonged precipitation intervals, can considerably affect the structural integrity of a slope system. The complexity of the analysis can be further escalated by expanding the stability model from an individual slope case to a regional scale, because of the spatial variability characterizing the soil geotechnical properties. The studied area in this paper is represented by Longyeardalen, Svalbard. A considerable amount of field measurements, laboratory testing results, analytical determinations were processed for the region, with the purpose of generating a suitable input configuration for the stability assessment model. Essential data, related to the landslide vulnerability of a slope system, can be divided generally into thermal parameters, mentioning soil heat capacity, thermal conductivity, grain density, unfrozen water content; hydrological parameters such as soil permeability, hydraulic diffusivity, SWCC properties, water table level, porosity; and strength parameters including soil cohesion, internal friction angle, specific weight, rigidity moduli. A numerical thermal analysis was performed in PLAXIS V22, a finite element computational software, aiming to predict the evolution of active layer around Longyeardalen with respect to time. The numerical model was calibrated based on the existing thermal data series collected along the valley, the output was validated with thermal ...
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