Abstract
Cultural heritage is widely recognized to be at risk due to the impact of climate change and associated hazards, such as events of heavy rain, flooding, and drought. User-driven solutions are urgently required for sustainable management and protection of monumental complexes and related collections exposed to changes of extreme climate. With this purpose, maps of risk-prone areas in Europe and in the Mediterranean Basin have been produced by an accurate selection and analysis of climate variables (daily minimum and maximum temperature—Tn and Tx, daily cumulated precipitation—RR) and climate-extreme indices (R20mm, R95pTOT, Rx5 day, CCD, Tx90p) defined by Expert Team on Climate Change Detection Indices (ETCCDI). Maps are available to users via an interactive Web GIS (Geographic Information System) tool, which provides evaluations based on historical observations (high-resolution gridded data set of daily climate over Europe—E-OBS, 25 km) and climate projections (regional climate models—RCM, ~12 km) for the near and far future, under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The tool aims to support public authorities and private organizations in the decision making process to safeguard at-risk cultural heritage. In this paper, maps of risk-prone areas of heavy rain in Central Europe (by using R20mm index) are presented and discussed as example of the outputs achievable by using the Web GIS tool. The results show that major future variations are always foreseen for the 30-year period 2071–2100 under the pessimistic scenario (RCP 8.5). In general, the coastal area of the Adriatic Sea, the Northern Italy, and the Alps are foreseen to experience the highest variations in Central Europe.
Highlights
It is widely recognized that climate change is creating continuous and new challenges for the protection and conservation of cultural heritage
Hazard and damage projections were forecasted to assess the impact of the slow ongoing climate change rather than extreme events on historic building envelopes, as well as on artwork preserved indoors
Projections of sea level rise—a potential threat to many coastal regions and to their cultural heritage—up to the year 2100 were calculated using a simulation with a global climate model and data from a regionally coupled atmosphere–ocean model regional model (REMO) run on the horizontal grid of 12.5 km, EUR-11) [9,10]
Summary
It is widely recognized that climate change is creating continuous and new challenges for the protection and conservation of cultural heritage. Atmosphere 2020, 11, 700 strengthened during the last 15 years, focusing in particular on slow damage processes, such as surface recession and thermal stress on marble, biological accumulation on architectural surfaces, and metal corrosion [1,2,3,4,5,6] In this respect, the EU FP6 Project Noah’s Ark (2004–2007) produced a vulnerability atlas with maps by applying the global and regional Hadley climate models (grid resolutions of 295 × 278 km and 50 × 50 km, respectively), along with guidelines for cultural heritage protection towards climate change, coupling climatology with conservation science expertise and acquiring unique knowledge in delivering future projections of damage of outdoor cultural heritage induced mainly by slow climate changes [1]. Recent H2020-funded projects (HEritage Resilience Against CLimate Change on Site—HERACLES, Safeguarding cultural heritage through Technical and Organisational Resources Management—STORM) have focused on the development of information and communications technology (ICT) systems and solutions to strengthen the resilience of cultural heritage against climate change effects and natural hazards, and have started to focus on the impacts of extreme events [11]
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