Concluding Report of the IRDR Discussion Forum: Heritage and Disasters

The UCL Institute for Risk and Disasters Reduction (IRDR) successfully held its public event in form of a panel discussion on Heritage and Disasters at UCL on 9th March from 18.

00 to 21.00. Five panelists from academia and practice engaged in a vibrant and lively discussion on how to protect cultural heritage from disasters such as earthquakes and conflicts. There were 120 registrants from heritage and disaster studies and practice. It was exciting to see that most of attendees were from the heritage sector, e.g. museums, heritage studies and NGOs. The attendees enjoyed an interactive and thought-provoking discussion with the panelists.  A drinks reception during which attendees could network and continue their informal discussions followed the discussion.

The panel included William Brown, National Security Adviser, Arts Council England; Dr. Sergio Olivero, Head of Energy and Security Research Area, SiTI (Istituto Superiore sui Sistemi Territoriali per l'Innovazione)s, Italy; Dr. Kalliopi Fouseki, Lecturer and course director for the MSc Sustainable Heritage at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage (ISH); Jonathan N. Tubb, Keeper (Head), Middle East, The British Museum. Dr. Farnaz Arefian, Enterprise Manager at IRDR and Founder of 'Silk Cities' Platform, chaired the discussion. Discussion started with panelists' opening statements: Why the protection of cultural heritage is important and how we can protect and enhance its resilience to disasters? What are the complexities in practice? How existing academic discourse and research on heritage and disaster risk reduction can play role in heritage resilience? How the public and private sectors can be mobilized to proactively reduce disaster risk to our cultural heritage and enhance successful recovery and/or reconstruction when it is impacted?

Tangible and intangible cultural heritage are symbols and identity holders of a community. Protecting and restoring cultural heritage following a disaster has a significant effect on the local communities and is fundamental to civilization. Innovation and technology can help us to predict, to prevent and therefore to reduce risks, especially for natural hazards. For example, the British Museum is using 3D mapping technologies for the restoration of culture heritage in the Middle East and has initiated training programs for Iraqi archaeologists. Sergio Olivero elaborated on how SiTi is developing mechanisms based on creating knowledge-based businesses to restore culture heritages and engage with refugees and displaced communities. Instead of simply giving equipment or sending experts, Sergio Olivero and Jonathan Tubb advocated transferring knowledge to local professionals to build up their competence, because locals know their culture and their heritage better than an outside practitioner. However timing is a critical issue especially in a post conflict situation. Kalliopi Fouseki mentioned a bottom up approach involving local communities to protect their culture heritage and extending the risk assessment from quantitative to qualitative and subjective. William Brown suggested an international and cross-sector collaboration of creating a database of artifacts in order to better protect and trace them. Protecting culture heritage is not only the responsibility of public entities, but also attracts the attention of private sectors. Building up an eco-system relying on both private and public entities can create a resilient environment to protect cultural heritage. In the question session, attendees suggested that social media can be better used in communicating importance of protecting cultural heritage; the involvement of private collectors in culture heritage protection would be effective; living culture heritage also needs to be protected as well and we can create platforms to facilitate collaborative action in protecting culture heritages.

The challenges of protecting culture heritage against man-made and natural disasters remain difficult and further work is necessary. However the awareness of protecting culture heritage is rising up. Several people suggested, "that IRDR should plan other similar events to raise awareness on these important issues" and the need for bringing multidisciplinary experts from academia and practice at UCL was raised. It was also suggested the future events on this subject to focus more on natural hazards for which pre-disaster preparations and risk assessment is possible and related to risk assessment and emergency planning while the importance of post disaster response still is prominent. Kalliopi Fouseki suggested IRDR to lead on creating an international network, integrating interdisciplinary expertise and engaging with both public and private entities to grasp the opportunities to protect and restore better culture heritage utilizing novel technologies.

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