About ARCH

ARCH is a European-funded research project that aims to better preserve areas of cultural heritage from hazards and risks. The ARCH team with 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.

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 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.ARCH‘s expert interdisciplinary team includes four European municipalities; Bratislava, Camerino, Hamburg, and Valencia; research scientists, city network ICLEI and standardisation organisation DIN.

ARCH will run for 39 months from 2019-06-01 to 30-08-2022.

Outputs

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

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.

    Standardisation

    The project will support transferability of results and make its outcomes widely available through identifying standardisation opportunities and initiating standardisation activities.

      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.

      This disaster risk management framework will build on the Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient, the Sendai action plan, and the RAMSES Transition Handbook and aims to be transferable and compatible with existing  approaches.