Mapping cultural heritage sites at risk: A support tool for heritage sites management

Abstract

Under the threat of climate change, the world has become increasingly unsafe, with extreme weather events causing devastation and high economic costs. These impacts are heterogeneous because of the interaction between different regional climate changes and the varying socio-economic characteristics of affected places. Climate change also impacts the management of cultural heritage sites. We then propose a method to identify heritage sites at risk from climate change issues, considering the single components of risk, namely both the natural hazard and the resilient/vulnerable local characteristics that may increase or mitigate the potential damage. The link between the natural and human spheres is, in fact, crucial for the development of suitable mitigation and prevention strategies, particularly relevant for developing countries that suffer from scarce economic resources. Overall, this work aims to provide a method to detect heritage sites at risk and a decision support tool for strategically managing cultural sites. We focus on Italy since it is one of the countries with a higher endowment of cultural heritage. However, thanks to its high replicability, this tool might be exported and adopted in different contexts and scenarios.