DALIH: a database for recording disaster damage and loss data for cultural heritage

Existing international frameworks and programmes for disaster risk reduction emphasize the need to develop and implement measures to reduce hazard exposure and vulnerability to disasters. Among other aspects, current DRR initiatives such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction recognise the importance of cultural heritage and its irreplaceable value for society. Therefore, such initiatives clearly highlight the need to assess the impact that potential hazards may have on the built cultural heritage.

Developing adequate risk assessment and management processes are crucial elements towards this end and it is a known fact that systematically collected and accurate damage and loss data are essential for such processes. The development of systems, models and methodologies to collect and handle such data should, therefore, become a worldwide priority, according to this paper.

In the cultural heritage sector, there is no systematic collection of data on the impacts of hazardous events involving cultural heritage properties. Existing data on damage and losses to cultural heritage are scattered among various agencies (national and international) without any coherence and coordination. Furthermore, no standardised methods and tools have been developed for cultural heritage disaster data collection until now.

In this article, the University of Porto advocates for and proposes a standardized methodology to record damage to immovable cultural heritage, an essential yet missing tool in better understanding vulnerabilities and reducing hazard exposure. The DALIH (Damage and Loss Inventory for Heritage) database was created to collect worldwide data on immovable cultural heritage disaster losses and start addressing some of the limitations of existing systems.
KEYWORDS: databases, damage recording, immovable cultural heritage, response. In PROCULTHER-NET Project. Technical Bulletin N. 2, June 2023, pp 75-79