Multi-determinant climate change risk assessment for heritage: A review of current approaches and future needs

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change is radically changing the way we relate to and interact with our shared histories. Culturally important sites have already been damaged and lost due to our changing climate and this will only continue. Considering the extent of climate change impacts, it is vital that assessing the risks of climate change looks beyond the changing prevalence of climatic hazards, such as sea level rise, to consider the predisposition of the historic environment to be impacted by the hazard, the location of heritage sites and their relative exposure, adaptive responses and their associated risks, and the cultural significance of the places themselves. This review provides an overview of current climate change risk assessments for heritage, with specific attention paid to how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) risk framework, and its risk determinants (exposure, hazard, vulnerability, and response) have been conceptualised. It systematically reviews scholarly literature published between 2017 and 2022 to determine: the uptake of the four risk determinants; how these terms are represented; and the methods for combining these elements into a dynamic risk framework which can be scaled to assess multiple sites. Significant advances have been made in identifying and preparing for the future impacts of climate change, but there is still an imbalance towards single-site risk assessments — particularly for the historic built environment. Furthermore, the review identifies and provides summaries of multi-determinant risk assessments that engage with the complexities of heritage futures beyond just changing climatic hazards to better understand the impacts of climate change on the historic environment in its totality.