Increasing the Resilience of Cultural Heritage to Climate Change Through the Application of a Learning Strategy

Sesana, Elena; Bertolin, Chiara; Loli, Arian; Gagnon, Alexandre S.; Hughes, John Jay; Leißner, Johanna

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-12957-6_29

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 21 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…The selection of case study sites in those three countries allowed for triangulation of information. These sites were also selected as they form part of a larger project led by the first author with research on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change risks reported elsewhere [56,57]. The number of interviews was based on the principle of saturation in qualitative research, i.e., when it became evident that there was redundancy in the interviewees' answers and no new theme emerged, no additional interviews were conducted.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating Climate Change in the Cultural Built Heritage Sector

Sesana

Bertolin

Gagnon

et al. 2019

Climate

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Climate change mitigation targets have put pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of cultural heritage buildings. Commonly adopted measures to decrease the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of historical buildings are targeted at improving their energy efficiency through insulating the building envelope, and upgrading their heating, cooling and lighting systems. However, there are complex issues that arise when mitigating climate change in the cultural built heritage sector. For instance, preserving the authenticity of heritage buildings, maintaining their traditional passive behaviours, and choosing adaptive solutions compatible with the characteristics of heritage materials to avoid an acceleration of decay processes. It is thus important to understand what the enablers, or the barriers, are to reduce the carbon footprint of cultural heritage buildings to meet climate change mitigation targets. This paper investigates how climate change mitigation is considered in the management and preservation of the built heritage through semi-structured interviews with cultural heritage experts from the UK, Italy and Norway. Best-practice approaches for the refurbishment of historical buildings with the aim of decreasing their energy consumption are presented, as perceived by the interviewees, as well as the identification of the enablers and barriers in mitigating climate change in the cultural built heritage sector. The findings emphasise that adapting the cultural built heritage to reduce GHG emissions is challenging, but possible if strong and concerted action involving research and government can be undertaken to overcome the barriers identified in this paper.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating Climate Change in the Cultural Built Heritage Sector

Sesana

Bertolin

Gagnon

et al. 2019

Climate

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“…3 The World Bank is promoting the employment of measures and conventions to safeguard against disaster risks and to strengthen resilience, making disaster resilience an intrinsic part of cultural heritage management (World Bank Group 2017). Although there are several projects in this field, a lack of dissemination of the outcomes of scientific research to managers of cultural heritage in the context of adaptation to climate change impacts (Sesana et al 2019) has emerged. The literature outlines that, due to the high exposure to climate-related events, it is necessary to define guidelines and recommendations to implement these kinds of measures to obtain not only cultural heritage protection but also enhance the preparedness of landscape for natural disasters (Dastgerdi et al 2019).…”

Section: Cultural Heritage and Disaster Insurancementioning

confidence: 99%

Managing climate change risk: the case of the Italian Churches

Porrini

Masi

2020

Nat Hazards

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In a world of increasing and worse and worse climate events, there is an urgent need to find how to manage the climate change risk and make cultural heritage more resilient. Given the relevant threat represented by climate-related events, this paper aims to analyze the role of insurance in safeguarding cultural heritage from natural disasters. The focus is on Italian Churches seen as a particular case of study. Taking into consideration the characteristics of the managing risk strategy, we use a value-belief-norm approach and a decision tree analysis to evaluate the efficiency of the governance scheme adopted. In the case examined of the Italian Churches, the strategy is mainly based on a private insurance contract characterized by a double track, local and national, to reach the important goal of the full coverage of all churches. We conclude that cultural heritage can drive climate action and the originality of the Italian Churches strategy can represent a benchmark in this field.

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“…However, mitigation efforts are not currently meeting carbon reduction goals (Brown et al, 2019), furthering the importance of climate readiness by all sectors (Paas, 2016). Only in the past decade have a small but increasing number of studies and policies begun to address climate adaptation of historic buildings and other built heritage (e.g., Fatori� c and Seekamp, 2017a; Leissner et al, 2015;Rockman et al, 2016;Sabbioni et al, 2010;Sesana et al, 2019;UNESCO, 2008). 1 Climate adaptation of historic buildings aims to reduce the damage or optimize opportunities associated with current or potential future climate change impacts (IPCC, 2014).…”

Section: Value-based Prioritization Considerations For Climate Adaptamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lack of guidance regarding climate adaptation planning and implementation for historic buildings has been recognized as significant barrier within current historic preservation and cultural heritage management efforts (Fatori� c and Seekamp, 2017c;Sesana et al, 2018). Failure to design and implement proactive adaptation strategies for historic buildings will likely necessitate reactive management decisions that do not promote adaptive learning, long-term adaptation strategies (Sesana et al, 2019), but result in more costly protection measures in the future (ECONADAPT, 2015). Recent damage on historic buildings-such as a historic building that was built by slaves in Wilmington, North Carolina and damaged during Hurricane Florence in 2018 2 -demonstrates the consequences of failing to take urgent preventive measures against more severe and frequent environmental or climate hazards, as well as the lack of alignment of various government agencies' goals and strategies.…”

Section: Value-based Prioritization Considerations For Climate Adaptamentioning

confidence: 99%

Historic preservation priorities for climate adaptation

Seekamp

Fatorić

McCreary

2020

Ocean & Coastal Management

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Cultural heritage-specific research is scarce within the climate change literature and climate change policy documents, challenging climate adaptation efforts to minimize adverse impacts on cultural heritage. Engaging and assessing diverse stakeholders' values and integrating those with evidence-based knowledge is critical for timely, effective and transparent preservation and climate adaptation of coastal cultural heritage. This study assessed technical experts' and community groups' opinions about the importance of value-based prioritization considerations to provide more immediate guidance adaptation planning and decision making. The findings from four separate elicitation surveys demonstrated substantial consistency in value-based climate adaptation prioritization preferences for one type of vulnerable cultural heritage: historic buildings in coastal zones in the United States. In particular, the samples of cultural heritage professionals and members of community groups consistently rated spatial importance, uniqueness, and scientific value of historic buildings as very important considerations for climate adaptation prioritization decision-making. Also, consistently evaluated but of relatively low importance were considerations related to the cost of preservation and adaptation treatments, including previous investments. Few statistically significant differences were found among our samples in their perceptions of importance. These findings provide initial guidance to cultural heritage managers, particularly those with scarce financial resources to allocate for adapting coastal historic buildings, and demonstrate the need for continued development of approaches that provide rapid assessment of coastal heritage stakeholders' adaptation priorities.

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Increasing the Resilience of Cultural Heritage to Climate Change Through the Application of a Learning Strategy

Abstract: This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Transdisciplinary Multispectral Modeling and Cooperation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage: Communications in Computer and Information Science.

Cited by 8 publications

References 21 publications

Mitigating Climate Change in the Cultural Built Heritage Sector

Mitigating Climate Change in the Cultural Built Heritage Sector

Managing climate change risk: the case of the Italian Churches

Historic preservation priorities for climate adaptation

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