Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ARCH (Advancing Resilience of Historic Areas against Climate-related and other Hazards)
Reporting period: 2020-12-01 to 2022-08-31
Historic towns, old urban quarters, villages and hamlets, as well as historic landscapes make up a significant part of Europe’s identity: Natural heritage sites cover roughly 18% of the European land territory (The European Commission, 2018) and on average 22% of the European housing stock was constructed before 1946 (Nicol et al, 2016). These historic areas are deeply embedded in larger urban and rural environments, serving a role in preserving local identity and personality as well as local knowledge.
However, while negative impacts of climate-related and other hazards on contemporary urban areas are widely adressed in literature and research, their impacts on historic areas and their communities, have not yet been studied extensively. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction also seldom register as a priority areas for heritage management.
Increasing the resilience of historic areas, with their unique structure, therefore calls for advanced decision support solutions that combine disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, and heritage management. These tools must enable municipal staff, practitioners and decision-makers to address both the chronic stresses posed by climate change as well as the shocks and existing risks posed by other disasters in collaboration with the local communities. However, to date, typical decision support solutions to increase resilience still consider disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in isolation. In addition, these solutions need to take the unique physical, environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political aspects of historic areas, as well as the enabling conditions these areas provide for taking action into account.
However, tools and methods alone are not enough. They need to be supported by a stronger promotion of relevant public policies and participatory governance processes, which include residents from local communities and a general public. The awareness of climate change impacts on historic areas needs to be increased, resilience building strategies need to be included in heritage management policies and practices, while at the same time the role heritage can play for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction within the wider urban context has to be emphasized.
The EU Horizon 2020 research project ARCH took a step in this direction. It provided a resilience framework and a suite of tools for assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas. These solutions were applied in four city cases and distributed via a Mutual Learning Framework to 12 additional European cities and towns. Via this co-development and co-application, ARCH had significant impact on local resilience management of historic areas, breaking silos, and advancing integration between diciplines.
Finally, using the learnings from applying these solutions, ARCH made recommendations to decision-makers, practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers on how to make use of the opportunities provided by historic areas and how to adress still existing open challanges to increase their resilience.
However, while negative impacts of climate-related and other hazards on contemporary urban areas are widely adressed in literature and research, their impacts on historic areas and their communities, have not yet been studied extensively. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction also seldom register as a priority areas for heritage management.
Increasing the resilience of historic areas, with their unique structure, therefore calls for advanced decision support solutions that combine disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, and heritage management. These tools must enable municipal staff, practitioners and decision-makers to address both the chronic stresses posed by climate change as well as the shocks and existing risks posed by other disasters in collaboration with the local communities. However, to date, typical decision support solutions to increase resilience still consider disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in isolation. In addition, these solutions need to take the unique physical, environmental, economic, social, cultural, and political aspects of historic areas, as well as the enabling conditions these areas provide for taking action into account.
However, tools and methods alone are not enough. They need to be supported by a stronger promotion of relevant public policies and participatory governance processes, which include residents from local communities and a general public. The awareness of climate change impacts on historic areas needs to be increased, resilience building strategies need to be included in heritage management policies and practices, while at the same time the role heritage can play for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction within the wider urban context has to be emphasized.
The EU Horizon 2020 research project ARCH took a step in this direction. It provided a resilience framework and a suite of tools for assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas. These solutions were applied in four city cases and distributed via a Mutual Learning Framework to 12 additional European cities and towns. Via this co-development and co-application, ARCH had significant impact on local resilience management of historic areas, breaking silos, and advancing integration between diciplines.
Finally, using the learnings from applying these solutions, ARCH made recommendations to decision-makers, practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers on how to make use of the opportunities provided by historic areas and how to adress still existing open challanges to increase their resilience.
ARCH started with analysing the state-of-the-art related to resilience management in historic areas as well as assessing the local resilience baseline in the city cases. In parallel, research partners and city partners identyfied specific local problems to be solved by ARCH's solutions. From this foundation, project partners iteratively co-created a resilience framework, five decision support tools, novel sensors and climate services, as well as additional information (e.g. on financing options for resilience measures). The results were further distributed to a circle of 12 European cities, who participated together with ARCH's pilot cities in a Mutual Learning Framework.
The main project outcomes are
- A resilience framework combining disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, and heritage management, supported by a resilience knowledge base (ARCH HUB) that provides guidance, best practices, and helpful tools. This framework has been transformed in a CEN Workshop Agreement and thus is likely to be transferred into European standardization.
- A geoinformation management system (HArIS/THIS) that combines information on the conditions of historic areas and assets (including social, cultural, economic, environmental, and other elements) with hazard information (e.g. temperature, precipitation, air pollution)
- A number of dashboards for risk analysis, using the information from the geinformation management system (ARCH DSS)
- A database of more than 250 resilience measures (RMI) as well as a web-tool for planning and evaluation of implementation pathways (RPVT)
- An online tool for the collaborative assessment and monitoring of the resilience maturity of a historic area (RAD).
These tools have been gathered, together with other resources, in a resilience knowledge base (ARCH HUB).
To disseminate and exploit its results, ARCH foudnated the EU R&I task force on climate neutral and resilience historic urban districts, together with ist sister projects SHELTER and HYPERION. This task force coordinates EU research efforts on resilience historic districts and brings together actors from research, policy, and practice. Main result of the task force is a joint paper which sheds light on challanges and opportunities to make historic districts more resilient.
The main project outcomes are
- A resilience framework combining disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, and heritage management, supported by a resilience knowledge base (ARCH HUB) that provides guidance, best practices, and helpful tools. This framework has been transformed in a CEN Workshop Agreement and thus is likely to be transferred into European standardization.
- A geoinformation management system (HArIS/THIS) that combines information on the conditions of historic areas and assets (including social, cultural, economic, environmental, and other elements) with hazard information (e.g. temperature, precipitation, air pollution)
- A number of dashboards for risk analysis, using the information from the geinformation management system (ARCH DSS)
- A database of more than 250 resilience measures (RMI) as well as a web-tool for planning and evaluation of implementation pathways (RPVT)
- An online tool for the collaborative assessment and monitoring of the resilience maturity of a historic area (RAD).
These tools have been gathered, together with other resources, in a resilience knowledge base (ARCH HUB).
To disseminate and exploit its results, ARCH foudnated the EU R&I task force on climate neutral and resilience historic urban districts, together with ist sister projects SHELTER and HYPERION. This task force coordinates EU research efforts on resilience historic districts and brings together actors from research, policy, and practice. Main result of the task force is a joint paper which sheds light on challanges and opportunities to make historic districts more resilient.
Important scientific progress has been made by ARCH by:
- The development of a resiience framework and accompanying guidance that combines disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, heritage management, and social justice
- The improvement of the adaptation pathway approach to a flexible resilience pathway approach, supported by a web-tool for pathway planning
- The collection and assessment of more than 250 resilience measures
- The development of a joint geoinformation management system for hazards and area/asset condition
- The development of a resilience assessment tool for historic areas, based on the UNDRR Disaster Resilience Scorecards for Cities and Buildings
- The development of risk anaylsis dashboards for idnicator based risk analysis of historic areas
- These developments are supported by novel sensors, environmental monitoring techniques, autonomous 3D scanning and modelling approaches, new approaches to vulnerability and risk analysis with specific focus on historic areas, and an inventory of financing options for resilience measures.
Actual and potential impact of ARCH is generated by:
- Developing the resilience framework into a pre standard with CWA 17727 and CEN/TC 465 assessing how to take-up this CWA - as well as related CWAs from the SMR project - into its work programme
- The actual use of ARCH's tools, not only in its four pilot cities, but also beyond. The cities of Rome, Liverpool, and Maribor have shown interest in applying the ARCH tools
- All ARCH pilot cities using the project to advance their work on resilience, e.g. Valencia establishing a working group on climate change and food; Hamburg integrating heritage management in its digitalization strategy, Camerino advancing its rebuilding plans, and Bratislava using the tools to prepare its new SECAP
- Several follow-up projects being pursued, one of which will continue the EU R&I task force from 2023 to 2026
- Inclusion of ARCH results in guidance and discussions of the Urban Agenda Partnership on Culture and Cultural Heritage.
- The development of a resiience framework and accompanying guidance that combines disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, heritage management, and social justice
- The improvement of the adaptation pathway approach to a flexible resilience pathway approach, supported by a web-tool for pathway planning
- The collection and assessment of more than 250 resilience measures
- The development of a joint geoinformation management system for hazards and area/asset condition
- The development of a resilience assessment tool for historic areas, based on the UNDRR Disaster Resilience Scorecards for Cities and Buildings
- The development of risk anaylsis dashboards for idnicator based risk analysis of historic areas
- These developments are supported by novel sensors, environmental monitoring techniques, autonomous 3D scanning and modelling approaches, new approaches to vulnerability and risk analysis with specific focus on historic areas, and an inventory of financing options for resilience measures.
Actual and potential impact of ARCH is generated by:
- Developing the resilience framework into a pre standard with CWA 17727 and CEN/TC 465 assessing how to take-up this CWA - as well as related CWAs from the SMR project - into its work programme
- The actual use of ARCH's tools, not only in its four pilot cities, but also beyond. The cities of Rome, Liverpool, and Maribor have shown interest in applying the ARCH tools
- All ARCH pilot cities using the project to advance their work on resilience, e.g. Valencia establishing a working group on climate change and food; Hamburg integrating heritage management in its digitalization strategy, Camerino advancing its rebuilding plans, and Bratislava using the tools to prepare its new SECAP
- Several follow-up projects being pursued, one of which will continue the EU R&I task force from 2023 to 2026
- Inclusion of ARCH results in guidance and discussions of the Urban Agenda Partnership on Culture and Cultural Heritage.