Geospatial Analysis of Road Conditions and Hazardous Factors in Communities on Continuous vs. Sporadic Permafrost in Greenland

Road conditions and hazardous factors were surveyed in two permafrost-affected communities of West Greenland, Ilulissat (underlain by continuous ice-rich permafrost) and Sisimiut (underlain by sporadic permafrost). Pavement damages, repairs, embankment structural elements, artificial drainage systems, water accumulations and preferential snow ploughing deposits were notably mapped and georeferenced in a geographic information system to form high-resolution spatial databases. In total, respectively 66 and 76 \% of the paved road networks of Ilulissat and Sisimiut were surveyed. Manual in-situ mapping took place in September 2020 and September 2021 in Ilulissat, while Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) equipment was used to map road conditions in Sisimiut in September 2020. The severity of the pavement damages was assessed according to the ASTM D 6433–07, Standard Practice for Roads and Parking Lots Pavement Condition Index Surveys, by ASTM International (2008). The drainage conditions were characterized following the recommendations in Cold Regions Pavement Engineering, by Doré, G. and Zubeck, H. K. (2009).

This dataset comprises the geospatial layers of the road damage and hazard inventories created for the settlements of Ilulissat and Sisimiut. Each settlement’s inventory is provided in a ZIP-folder, containing the geospatial layers as geopackages and sorted following a thematic structure. Further information about each layer and its attributes can be found in the metadata PDF document.