Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing our planet today. From droughts to heatwaves, floods and storms, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. While the impacts on cities will vary widely, it is clear that they will face frequent extreme events in future years. This also means that cultural heritage and historic urban areas are at risk from climate change and other natural hazards. So, how do we ensure their protection in an era of climate crisis?

Only by assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas can cities prepare for future disasters and reduce their associated risks. To this end, the EU-funded project ARCH – Advancing Resilience of historic areas against Climate-related and other Hazards has developed a disaster risk management framework sensitive to the situation of historic areas. In this framework, new tools and methodologies help local governments to better understand, plan and develop resilient strategies tailored to their specific needs, including those of historic areas. The framework builds on the Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient, the Sendai action plan, and the RAMSES Transition Handbook and is transferable and compatible with existing approaches. However, it goes further by bridging the gap between Disaster Risk Management, Climate Change Adaptation, and Cultural Heritage Management; considering innovative approaches that keep in mind the protection of cultural heritage.

The ARCH project has used a co-creation process to create a suite of new tools like the ARCH Resilience Assessment Dashboard - RAD and the ARCH Resilience Measures Inventory - RMI. These tools have been developed through ongoing engagement with technical partners as well as four foundation cities (Hamburg, Bratislava, Camerino, Valencia) and a growing cohort of cities taking part in the ARCH Mutual Learning Framework.