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Introduction
Risk management evaluates potential dangers, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities while preparing the best way to counteract them. It includes working against the effects of climate change, technogenic disasters, extreme weather conditions, natural disasters, and other types of influence. The process of understanding challenges is closely connected with risk prevention, planning, and recovery. Heritage site risk management is among the most complicated issues due to the need to preserve places of cultural significance. Such places exist as ruins of past cities, notable areas of human activity, or monuments to the people of the past (Crowley et al. 2022). Regardless of their form, they are vital to humanity. It is a well-known belief that being close to heritage sites can be spiritually or mentally beneficial, but the connection between disaster, risk management, and heritage sites needs to be better explored. It is critical to apply risk management principles while working with cultural heritage sites to preserve them for future generations.
Importance of Site Management
Because of both their age and cultural value, heritage sites are uniquely vulnerable. They are frequently exposed to the elements, influenced by changes in climate, human activity, and even things like armed conflict or vandalism. Maintaining a heritage site means safeguarding its primary notable qualities while allowing individuals to engage with it in a meaningful manner. As discussed by the researchers, the process of management in the planet’s current state is more than just preserving places of significance (Crowley et al. 2022). It is also a commitment to transforming them, adapting to challenges introduced by the climate, and creating opportunity. The scholars present a more flexible framework for interacting with heritage sites, concentrating on conservation when financially and materially viable while considering change as an essential step in addressing the climate threat (Seekamp and Jo 2020). This perspective recognizes the value of cultural sites and attempts to help them stay relevant. While one’s connection to the past and their people may change or diminish, a transformed cultural site can still bring more benefit to the population than a destroyed one.
Heritage Sites and Resilience
Heritage sites allow humanity to build resilience, which is essential for risk management. They give people the strength and drive to face the challenges ahead or give them valuable ideas for making decisions (Fabbricatti et al. 2020). In cases where it becomes impossible to mitigate the impact of a specific event fully, it is necessary to prepare people for it instead. In this process, places of cultural significance play a vital role. They give individuals a sense of connection to their past and unite communities with shared values. Therefore, the presence of heritage sites and their continued preservation is vital to facilitating a fuller and more intricate system of risk management (García 2019). It gives people the ability to face challenges and overcome them, find a sense of purpose in living, and work toward protecting what they have. More research must be done into better ways of incorporating heritage sites into risk management discussions (García 2019). Most plans focus on directly countering the risks involved, while a value-based perspective might provide new insights into the subject.
It is necessary to define the risk to the cultural heritage to understand how to react to these situations. The significant characteristics of the risks are their catastrophic consequences for the cultural heritage and their sudden character, which makes the situation unexpected (ICCROM 2016). For instance, examples of the risks that require coordinated actions are fires, floods, earthquakes, or armed conflicts (ICCROM 2016). Therefore, specialists must protect valuable objects from the destructive impact of these factors as much as possible.
Another peculiar detail is that risk management of cultural heritage is connected with paying attention to various protection aspects. It includes the economic, socio-cultural, political, legal, administrative, and environments associated with the cultural heritage (ICCROM 2016). For example, every cultural heritage site should be assigned to the organization responsible for its preservation and risk management. As a result, the risks connected with sudden catastrophic events should be minimized or eliminated by this organization (Jigyasu 2019). An example of the official responsible for cultural heritage is the National Museum Board, which checks all museums to follow the risk management guidelines (García 2019). Therefore, every cultural heritage object or site should be controlled officially to ensure it is protected from the risk management perspective.
There are specific methods that allow professionals to preserve cultural heritage, and most countries follow similar patterns in this sphere. For instance, some states have different data collection and analysis systems that focus on cultural heritage protection and monitoring. Among them are the governmental agencies for technical cooperation and consultancy on cultural heritage management issues, action plans like urban heritage maintenance, and other related interventions (Tamayo et al. 2012). The vital detail is that European countries have yet to have one single protocol for cultural heritage risk management, which makes the interaction process in the critical environment difficult for various services.
The example of the European Union and its policies concerning the preservation of cultural heritage shows that every country follows its original protocol for risk management. As a result, it leads to disparities in the level of protection and eliminates potential risks for the cultural heritage sites and objects in these states. There are situations when the cultural heritage in France is more valued than in Croatia, which is not correct from a humanitarian point of view (Rajcic and Zarnic 2016). It is possible to illustrate the need for introducing a unified identity card for cultural heritage with the following lines:
“The current trends in heritage preservation are oriented to sustainable maintenance, preventive conservation, and rehabilitation of historic sites and monuments. They also include newly developed strategies of efficiency evaluation, and creation of user-friendly methodologies for screening of time-varying changes to heritage buildings as a result of human intervention and environmental impact” (Rajcic and Zarnic 2016, p. 3).
It allows assuming a vital need to elaborate the single systematic approach to risk management of the cultural heritage to facilitate the coordination of different parties. The unified protocol is the first and foremost step in completing this task to improve the risk management process.
Developing public policies that focus on preserving cultural heritage and improving risk management is essential in elaborating a better strategy. Risk management is supposed to follow sustainability principles that “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Jelinic and Tisma 2020, p. 79). Risk management is vital for national development (Thompson and Hopkin 2021). It makes the application of risk management principles to cultural heritage sites and objects a critical aspect to consider.
Conclusion
Heritage sites are essential to human life, history, and development. Adopting a more traditionally inclined risk assessment model makes it possible to interact with communities that are more directly affected by the problems of natural and technogenic disasters. Looking at the problem from a culturally historic perspective allows risk managers to see risk management cases as a process challenged by the community’s connection to their legacy. In this case, efforts to highlight the importance of heritage sites can be increased, or more funding can be spent on protecting places of historical significance. Humans can confidently build stronger communities and look into the future by preserving the past.
Reference List
Crowley, K., Jackson, R., O’Connell, S., Karunarthna, D., Retnowati, A., and Niemandet, D. (2022) ‘Cultural heritage and risk assessments: Gaps, challenges, and future research directions for the inclusion of heritage within climate change adaptation and disaster management’, Climate Resilience and Sustainability. Web.
Fabbricatti, Katia, et al. (2020) ‘Heritage community resilience: Towards new approaches for urban resilience and sustainability’, City, Territory and Architecture, 7(1), Web.
García, B. M. (2019). ‘Resilient cultural heritage for a future climate change’, Journal of International Affairs, 73(1), pp. 101–120. Web.
ICCROM. (2016) A guide to risk management of cultural heritage. Web.
Jelinic, D. A., and Tisma, S. (2020) ‘Ensuring sustainability of cultural heritage through effective public policies’, Urbani Izziv, 31(2), pp. 78–87. Web.
Jigyasu, R. (2019) ‘Managing cultural heritage in the face of climate change ‘, Journal of International Affairs, 73(1), pp. 87–100. Web.
Rajcic, V., and Zarnic, R. (2016) Risk and resilience of cultural heritage assets. Web.
Seekamp, E., and Jo, E. (2020) ‘Resilience and transformation of heritage sites to accommodate for loss and learning in a changing climate’, Climatic Change, 162(1), pp. 41–55, Web.
Tamayo, O. V., Paoloni, A., Vafadari, A., and Cesaro, G. (2012) Risk management at heritage sites – A case study of the Petra world heritage. UNESCO and KU Leuven. Web.
Thompson, C., and Hopkin, P. (2021) Fundamentals of risk management: Understanding, evaluating and implementing effective enterprise risk management. Kogan Page.
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