A Framework Proposal for Regional-Scale Flood-Risk Assessment of Cultural Heritage Sites and Application to the Castile and León Region (Central Spain)

Abstract

Floods, at present, may constitute the natural phenomenon with the greatest impact on the deterioration of cultural heritage, which is the reason why the study of flood risk becomes essential in any attempt to manage cultural heritage (archaeological sites, historic buildings, artworks, etc.) This management of cultural heritage is complicated when it is distributed over a wide territory. This is precisely the situation in the region of Castile and León (Spain), in which 2155 cultural heritage elements are registered in the Catalog of Cultural Heritage Sites of Castile and León, and these are distributed along the 94,226 km2 of this region. Given this scenario, the present study proposes a methodological framework of flood risk analysis for these cultural heritage sites and elements. This assessment is based on two main processing tools to be developed in addition: on the one hand, the creation of a GIS database in which to establish the spatial relationship between the cultural heritage elements and the flow-prone areas for different flood return periods and, on the other hand, the creation of a risk matrix in which different variables are regarded as associated both to flood hazard (return period, flow depth, and river flooding typology) and to flood vulnerability (construction typology, and construction structural relationship with the hydraulic environment). The combination of both tools has allowed us to establish each cultural heritage flood risk level, making its categorization of risk possible. Of all the cultural heritage sites considered, 18 of them are categorized under an Extreme flood risk level; and another 24 show a High potential flood risk level. Therefore, these are about 25% to 30% of all cultural heritage sites in Castile and León. This flood risk categorization, with a scientific basis of the cultural heritage sites at risk, makes it possible to define territories of high flood risk clustering; where local scale analyses for mitigation measures against flood risk are necessary.

Resilience of art cities to flood risk: A quantitative model based on depth‐idleness correlation

“…The adopted methodology follows the common approach of combining hazard, vulnerability, exposure, and capacity to assess risk, but with a quantification of resilience, indirect impacts and an original declination of the concepts of exposure and vulnerability. With respect to existing works that examined flood risk to CH by combining hazard maps and heritage typologies as main parameter for a qualitative vulnerability classification at national or regional scale (Figueiredo et al, 2019; Garrote & Escudero, 2020), this work focuses on the intermediate scale of site where numerous CH is present, that is, an art city. The resilience model here introduced allows to quantify the system dynamics which is crucial to evaluate the time needed to recover after an event, this aspect has been rarely investigated for CH.…”

“…The assessment of disaster losses on cultural heritage has not received enough attention so far and is considered quite challenging due to the multidimensionality of the problem (Romão et al, 2020;UNDP, 2013). Romão and Paupério (2021) As a consequence of the difficulties in quantifying exposure and vulnerability, flood risk assessment to cultural heritage has been mostly addressed in a qualitative way by categorizing and ranking assets in terms of vulnerability and performing exposure analysis at national or site scale Figueiredo et al, 2019;Garrote & Escudero, 2020;Miranda & Ferreira, 2019;Vojinovic et al, 2016;Wang, 2015). Flood vulnerability models for CH, that is, stage-damage functions are rarely found in literature (Figueiredo et al, 2021), since only recently the Sendai Framework has identified the promotion of resilient CH under the broad priority action areas.…”

Physical vulnerability assessment to flash floods using an indicator‐based methodology based on building properties and flow parameters

“…Vulnerability curves and indicator‐based methodologies are the two main methods for assessing physical vulnerability (Papathoma‐Köhle, 2016). Vulnerability matrices are another method applied for landslides, debris flows, or floods (e.g., Garrote, Díez‐Herrero, Escudero, & García, 2020; Hu, Cui, & Zhang, 2012; Leone, Asté, & Leroi, 1996; Rojas, Mardones, Rojas, Martínez, & Flores, 2017), although impaired by high subjectivity involved (Papathoma‐Köhle et al, 2017).…”

A Global Scale Analysis of River Flood Risk of UNESCO World Heritage Sites

“…Flood risk of cultural heritage has been recently analyzed at regional scale in Spain and at national scale in Portugal with a semi-quantitative approach based on hazard maps and vulnerability classification of heritage typology (Figueiredo et al, 2019;Garrote et al, 2020). At site scale, a flood risk framework has been applied to the historical city of Alzira (Spain) with a detailed catalog of morphological and constructive characteristics of monuments (Trizio et al, 2021).…”