A proposed assessment index for climate change-related risk for cultural heritage protection in Newcastle (Australia)

作者：Forino Giuseppe^*; MacKee Jamie; von Meding Jason

来源：International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2016, 19: 235-248.

DOI：10.1016/j.ijdrr.2016.09.003

• Climate change
• Cultural heritage
• Australia
• Disaster risk reduction
• Risk assessment
• Index

Worldwide, climate change is one of the main factors exacerbating the effects of hazards or generating additional risk. Investigation is required to understand climate change-related risks for all components of human systems, including cultural heritage. Accordingly, this paper aims to present a new risk assessment index for cultural heritage, referred to as the Cultural Heritage Risk Index (CHRI). The paper applies a desk-based review of the existing literature on climate change-related risks for cultural heritage and of multi-level policy and planning documents of cultural heritage management in Australia. The paper then presents the CHRI and describes its attributes based upon the formalisation of risk as a function of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. CHRI is applied to a unique asset of cultural heritage in Newcastle (Australia), the Burwood Beach Wastewater Treatment Works (BBWTW). The paper shows that this asset has a moderate risk related to climate change, and that some interventions can be applied to decrease its vulnerability. The use of a new index such as CHRI allows creating a baseline for the exploration of the relations between climate change-related risks and cultural heritage. It can be an effective part of tools assessing climate change-related risk on cultural heritage in Australia and might aid in prioritising specific interventions.

• 出版日期2016-10