Projects

ARCH

ARCH – Advancing Resilience of historic areas against Climate-related and other Hazards

2019 - 2022

The impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Cities will face frequent extreme events in future and the risk to cultural heritage and historic urban centres from climate change will also increase. ARCH is a European-funded research project that aims to better preserve areas of cultural heritage from hazards and risks. The ARCH team, including the cities of Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg and Valencia, will co-create tools that will help cities save cultural heritage from the effects of climate change.

ARCH will develop a disaster risk management framework for assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas to climate change and natural hazards. Tools and methodologies will be designed for local authorities and practitioners, the urban population, and national and international expert communities. The project will present various models, methods, tools and datasets to support decision-making.

Outputs

  • Hazard and Object Information Management System
  • Resilience Options Inventory and Resilience Pathway Design
  • Impact and Risk Assessment
  • Resilience Assessment Framework and Platform

The ARCH Consortium and ARCH Foundation Cities

Our Foundation cities (València, Hamburg, Camerino and Bratislava) are part of the interdisciplinary team of experts that comprises ARCH. These cities are vital partners as ARCH co-creates tools and methodologies designed for local authorities and practitioners, the urban population, and national and international expert communities. This group of Foundation Cities engage in knowledge-sharing with a broad-reaching new cohort of Keystone Cities. ARCH‘s expert interdisciplinary team also includes research scientists, city network ICLEI and standardisation organisation DIN.

Co-creation approach
In order to achieve the project‘s objectives and ensure applicability, acceptance and replicability of results, researchers, city practitioners, local policy makers, community members and other stakeholders will collaborate closely according to a co-creation framework and through the establishment of local partnerships.

Linking up with global aims
The project supports the implementation of the recommendations for building back better by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). ARCH will supplement the Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities with additional approaches specifically tailored to areas of cultural heritage to create a unified resilience assessment framework for assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas to climate change-related and other hazards.

Additional Project Contacts:

Eleanor Chapman

eleanor.chapman@iclei.org

Vasileios Latinos

vasileios.latinos@iclei.org

Katherine Peinhardt

katherine.peinhardt@iclei.org

  • Bratislava (Slovakia)
  • Valencia (Spain)
  • Camerino (Italy)
  • Alba (Italy)
  • Zadar (Croatia)
  • Appignano del Tronto (Italy)
  • Rhodes (Greece)
  • Liverpool (UK)
  • Thessaloniki (Greece)

Funded by the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Commission under grant no 820999