Through damage analysis and historical learning: a workflow for multi-hazard vulnerability assessment in cultural heritage preservation

Natural disasters and extreme weather events are defining this decade and will continue to do so in the future, impacting societies and ecosystems worldwide. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, adopted to mitigate these risks, also significantly emphasizes the protection and preservation of cultural heritage. It calls for cooperation among national authorities to raise awareness about the impact of hazards on cultural heritage and aligns with the goals of international organizations such as ICOMOS. Although earthquake risk vulnerability has been extensively studied, research on other extreme events, such as landslides and floods, is still limited. Additionally, a growing body of literature on multi-hazard management deals with managing combined natural events. However, there has not been enough research explicitly addressing the vulnerability of cultural heritage.

The research focuses on vulnerability as a multidimensional characteristic and its relationship to multi-scale architectural assets, including individual buildings, aggregates and historic urban cores. Vulnerability is determined by physical, social, and economic dimensions and explores its significance in different phenomena, including compounding and cascading events. A workflow is proposed, consisting of several steps: identifying significant events, assessing affected areas, evaluating the level of damage incurred, and conducting a vulnerability assessment. To understand how to address the issue of vulnerability assessment in a multi-hazard context, it is necessary to observe the effects of past disasters on the built environment.

The proposed methodology follows an inductive approach. The first part of the study, which is also the current focus of the work, consists of the selection of suitable cases for field investigation, intending to analyze the level of physical damage, the geology and hydrology, the history of the environment and events, and the development of building techniques. These studies explore possible relationships between disasters, building techniques and changing settlement patterns. The second phase, transitioning from the particular to the general, will be displayed by defining a list of methodological guidelines based on a critical abstraction from the findings of the first phase. Specifically, this will involve moving from damage observation to vulnerability assessment. General multi-hazard vulnerability criteria for historic centres will be established to analyze practical implications and purposes, including raising community awareness through increased knowledge of the architectural heritage and reconsidering historical studies as essential tools to mitigate future vulnerability.