Integrating cultural heritage risk management into urban planning. The Ravenna case study.

As increasingly recognised by scholars, climate change is posing new challenges in the field of risk management and urban planning. The natural and anthropogenic risks that characterise a given territory, see their effects amplified by those of climate change. Even though cultural heritage has passed through decades and centuries, it has never experienced such unexpected and variable events as those forecasted by climate change for the foreseeable future, making it a sensitive element of the living environment. This thesis, whose general context has been defined and provided by the European H2020 SHELTER project, aims at defining guidelines to reduce the gap between disaster risk management and urban planning in the field of cultural heritage in historic areas. To this aim, the current integration of both cultural heritage and protection and prevention measures within planning policies and tools for the case study of Ravenna has been explored, reported and analysed, with a specific focus on the church and archaeological area of Santa Croce. The specific objective is to understand to what extent data risk management, climate change adaptation and heritage site management are currently treated as key interlinked elements. The results obtained have led to the definition of a protocol for integrating climate change and disaster risks management into heritage management which is articulated into six phases. As part of the protocol, an evaluation method of how urban planning tools already in force contribute to the adaptive capacity of Ravenna’ territory in terms of treating and dealing with risk management has been proposed and validated. The proposed guidelines may lead to the improvement of the heritage management plans that heritage site managers applies to cope with risks related and the effects of climate change. Lastly, three punctual design actions for increasing the resilience of the area of Santa Croce have been explored.