Arctic infrastructure was built on frozen ground—drones and digital twins can help spot the permafrost thaw coming

From the air, Wainwright, Alaska, looks like a perfectly stable band of homes and roads between the Chukchi Sea and a vast, flat tundra. But just below the surface, the frozen ground on which this town was built contains large bodies of ice. Along the eroding coastal bluffs, that hidden ice is becoming exposed and melting away.

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