The UNESCO Regional Bureau in Europe, with TECNALIA and ALPHA, convened the final conference of SHELTER, a Horizon 2020 EU-funded project bringing closer scientific community and heritage managers for increasing resilience, reducing vulnerability and promoting safer reconstruction in historic areas. PROCULTHER-NET was invited to discuss the next steps and future collaboration in this field.
The Sustainable Historic Environments hoListic reconstruction through Technological Enhancement and community-based Resilience -SHELTER Final Conference hosted by the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe (Venice) on 27 April 2023, brought together 130 professionals across sectors and from more than 20 countries: consortium partners, international organisations, authorities, local and national governments, practitioners, experts and stakeholders in the sectors of disaster risk and water management, civil protection, natural and cultural heritage protection.
The event showcased the outcomes, results and key learnings of 4 years of activities and was structured around lectures and roundtable discussions allowing reflections on the future of the tools produced, and on possible partnerships and collaborations. Afterwards, the event delved into the lessons learnt and replicability of the experience developed within the open laboratories realised by the project in the World Heritage sites of the Area of Santa Croce in Ravenna (Italy); the coastal district of Seferihisar (Türkiye); the old town of Dordrecht and its island (Netherlands); the Baixa Limia-Serra do Xurés Natural Park in Galicia (Spain) and the transboundary Sava River Basin (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia). Ms Veronica Piacentini, PROCULTHER-NET project expert from the Italian Civil Protection Department, presented the project’s approach and objectives and took part in the open laboratories, a valuable opportunity to test the tools set up in the framework of SHELTER. This participation allowed the sharing of many innovative ideas to be explored thanks to the synergies created with PROCULTHER-NET and helped to consolidate the partnership with UNESCO, one of the project main stakeholders, including the initiatives supported in its framework. Indeed, these prototype tools developed by the SHELTER scientific community can contribute to strengthening the capacities of the Union's Civil Protection Mechanism and can be further enhanced if pooled with the thematic community focused on cultural heritage protection, strongly supported by the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network.
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Risk drivers