Permafrost and his change can affect heavenly infrastructures like streets and buildings in mountain areas above 2.500m a.s.l. To secure existing structures, and provide clues to build and maintain new ones in permafrost affected terrain, exchange of knowledge and experience about the permafrost issue between countries is essential.
The now presented “PermaNet – Permafrost Long-term Monitoring Network for the Alpine Space” is planned to provide a platform for permafrost research exchange for at least the next three years. It can be seen as “international version” of a more regional project, ProAlp, that was concluded in July of this year.

The project is funded and promoted trough the “Alpine Space Program”, supported by 7 countries that shares area in the European Alps – Italy, Austria, Slovenia, France, Germany, Swiss and Liechtenstein. One of the main goals of this program is environment and risk preventation, and on point is to research permafrost and related phenomena’s.

PermaNet will be a platform to collect and harmonize data between different institutions and partners in the different countries, to produce a coherent map of permafrost distribution in the European alps and improve models that simulate it’s distribution.
Many research and regional projects were carried out in the member countries, so interchange can/should be the next step.