Sustainable Historic Environments hoListic reconstruction through Technological Enhancement and community based Resilience

Overview

Over the last decades, as a consequence of the effects of climate change, Cultural Heritage has been impacted by an increasing number of climate related hazards, posing new challenges to conservators and heritage managers. SHELTER aims at developing a data driven and community-based knowledge framework that will bring together the scientific community and heritage managers with the objective of increasing resilience, reducing vulnerability and promoting better and safer reconstruction in historic areas.

The first step to enhance resilience is associated to the improvement in understanding the direct and indirect impacts of climatic and environmental changes and natural hazards on historic sites and buildings, by linking concepts commonly used in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation with cultural heritage management, in order to provide inclusive and informed decision-making.

Comprehensive disaster risk management plans need to be drawn up, based on the specific characteristics of cultural heritage and the nature of the hazards within a regional context, taking into account the diverse heritage typologies as well as the specific socioeconomic conditions, since this directly affect the vulnerability of such systems.

By a deep understanding of the hazard, the exposure and the vulnerability of the historic area, the local dynamics and the provision of innovative governance and community based models, it is possible to provide useful methodologies, tools and strategies to enhance resilience and secure sustainable reconstruction.

Due to the information complexity and the diverse data sources, SHELTER framework will be implemented in multiscale and multisource data driven platform, able to provide the necessary information for planning and adaptive governance. All the developments of the project will be validated in 5 open-labs, representative of main climatic and environmental challenges in Europe and different heritage’s typologies.

Key facts

• Cultural Heritage is being impacted by Climate Change
• New challenge for conservators
• Impact and hazards are dissimilar in locations around Europe
• Disconnected scientific community and unknown resilience practices

What SHELTER is providing

• Development a community-based knowledge framework
• Bringing together scientific community
• Promotion of better and safer reconstruction in Historic Areas
• Validation of all the developments in 5 different pilots where different heritage is present and different hazards are happening

Team

SHELTER is formed by a multidisciplinary and complementary consortium of 23 partners being 7 SMEs, 1 EEIG (European Economic Interest Groupings), 10 Research Organisations, 4 Public Bodies and 1 Policy Maker.

Additional information and documents

• Brochure & Poster
• GLOCAL user requirements final report (D6.1)
• Infographic Disaster-Risk Management governance of World Heritage Site managers
• SHELTER wiki definitions
• Infographics Sava River Basin - SHELTER (731.67 KB)
• Sava Youth Parliament Story Map
• Operative Knowledge Framework
• Infographic SAVA Open Lab stakeholder engagement

News

• SHELTER holds promise for the future of cultural heritage protection
• SHELTER Project fosters Disaster Risk Resilient Communities of the Future: Sava River Basin Open Lab Case
• World Heritage Site Managers’ perceptions of Disaster-Risk Management governance
• UNESCO hosts SHELTER workshop on GLOCAL user requirements for Disaster Risk Reduction and Cultural and Natural Heritage
• UNESCO co-coordinated online the second workshop with the SHELTER Sava River Basin Open Lab stakeholders 
• Local solutions and strategies for the flood protection of cultural heritage in the Sava River Basin
• Sava River basin Open Lab: Co-creating tools for better flood risk response
• EU Task Force for Climate Neutral and Resilience Historic Urban Districts kicked off
• 9th Sava Youth Parliament 2021: Let’s protect our cultural heritage
• Science of the Future. Amplifying the best practices for sustainable development
• Integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation for risk-informed and climate-smart development
• Risk-Informed Development: technological solutions and financial tools for enhancing resilience of cultural heritage 
• From the Sava River basin to the Netherlands: peer learning on flood risk management and cultural heritage protection
• EU Horizon 2020-funded SHELTER project presents results from 4 years of cooperation at its final conference in Venice 

Products

• Women Scientists as Actors of Change: poster on International Day for Women and Girls in Science
• World Engineering Day video
• SHELTER Sava River basin Open lab and the Sava Youth Parliament 2021 edition. Supporting Sava River Basin countries in Flood Risk Reduction

Interview

• Approaching gender diversity in EU scientific projects 

Newsletters

Newsletter n 1 (December 2019), Newsletter n 2 (July 2020), Newsletter n 3 (December 2020), Newsletter (4 July 2021), Newsletter n 5 (January 2022), Newsletter n 6 (July 2022), Newsletter n 7 (January 2023)

• website: https://shelter-project.com/
• facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shelterprojectsocial/
• twitter: https://twitter.com/Shelter_EU

• Jonathan Baker - Regional Advisor for Science. Head, Science unit j.baker@unesco.org(link sends e-mail)
• Francesca Bampa – Project officer Science unit f.bampa@unesco.org