A Framework for the Detailed Flood Vulnerability Modelling of Built Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Flooding is the most common and damaging of natural hazards at global level, and in a context of climate change, flood risk is expected to increase. This has prompted governments and international agencies to adopt measures towards the reduction of flood risk in recent years. Among them is the development of flood risk assessments and flood risk management plans, with particular emphasis on cultural heritage, not only due to its significance for society, but also because of its particularly high vulnerability to natural hazards, including floods. In order to quantify risk and define prioritization and management plans for a given set of cultural heritage assets, vulnerability models that allow estimating and comparing the impacts of floods at an asset-by-asset level are required. However, there is currently a lack of approaches in the literature to achieve this. This study proposes a component-based synthetic modelling framework to perform detailed vulnerability analyses of cultural heritage assets. The framework is illustrated through an application to a Portuguese church.

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