PROCULTHER-NET Project. Technical Bulletin N. 4, December 2024

This edition opens with an article from Turkiye in the PREVENTION section, which provides a blueprint on how cultural heritage can be directly embedded into Disaster Risk Reduction Plans, at national and regional levels, thus laying the foundations for an integrated approach.

The PREPAREDNESS section includes good practices aimed at enabling and strengthening operational capacities. Articles in this section deal with issues such as building a robust IT infrastructure to support response missions, with an example from Germany, and the importance of developing strong cooperation and common strategies between all actors involved. Testing capacities and processes within a realistic scenario can be seen as the culmination of the preparedness activities. This section thus brings us two valuable illustrations of the central role of exercises to ensure the operationality of disaster planning and management.

Within the broader context of the protection of cultural heritage in Switzerland, the first article focuses on concrete applications in the City of Geneva, and more particularly on an exercise conducted in March 2024 at the Bibliotheque de Geneve. The second article presents the two exercise phases organised in the Campi Flegrei area, in Italy, to face the bradyseism phenomenon and volcanic risk. Both articles emphasise the importance of cross-sectoral cooperation in emergencies, providing examples of exercises where various actors are involved in the protection of cultural heritage.

In the RESPONSE section, experiences from the earthquake that struck central Italy in 2016 are presented through two parallel contributions: the second part of the article on debris of cultural interest that was presented by the Italian Ministry of Culture in the third Technical Bulletin. Using examples from the 2016 earthquake in Central Italy, the article follows the different steps of debris management, from the emergency phase, to storage and restoration. The other contribution from Italy explores the expertise developed by the National Fire and Rescue Service in stabilizing and shoring up damaged, at-risk buildings, highlighting their role in protecting cultural heritage during emergencies. In this edition, the FOCUS ON section particularly concentrates on remote sensing, with two complementary case studies from Italy and Germany, exploring how these technologies can assist in protecting cultural heritage sites through different phases of the Disaster Risk Management Cycle, from monitoring to assisting in response operations.

Finally, in this anniversary year of the 1954 Hague Convention, an article from France focuses on the interdisciplinary dialogue between military and civilian organisations.