Mapping connections between heritage and resilience: a learning journey in interdisciplinary research
How can the preservation of cultural heritage be reconciled with the pressing challenges of climate adaptation?
How can the preservation of cultural heritage be reconciled with the pressing challenges of climate adaptation? This question served as the catalyst for a seminar held in Turin last March (Read the full article), where the Italian research team of the AGREE project facilitated a direct dialogue among institutions, researchers, and local professionals. The discussions highlighted strengths, challenges, and unresolved tensions between conservation approaches and transformative needs, offering a nuanced perspective on local policies for risk and heritage management.
Building on these reflections from WP1, which analyzed policy frameworks and discourses across Italy, Norway, and the United Kingdom, the project has now progressed into a more operational and experimental phase: Work Package 2 (WP2).
This second phase focuses on reconstructing, through the study of historical, geographical, climatic, and regulatory data, how cities and communities have historically responded to flood events, adapting their relationship with landscape and heritage. This endeavor sits at the intersection of historical research, digital tools, and territorial analysis and has been enriched by the direct involvement of two young collaborators from the UROP program at the Politecnico di Torino.
While WP1 laid the theoretical foundations, WP2 aims to build a shared informational base, with the ambitious goal of creating an integrated GIS model capable of comparatively representing the interactions between heritage, climate risk (particularly hydrogeological), and urban governance systems.
To support this work, the Turin group initiated a collaboration with two students from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP - UROP Programme) at the Politecnico di Torino. This excellence program seeks to actively involve students in ongoing research projects within the university, offering a highly qualifying educational opportunity based on direct dialogue with researchers and integration into scientific workgroups. Designed to value talent and individual initiative, the program allows students to approach applied research critically and interdisciplinarily, contributing ideas, tools, and new perspectives. The UROP students' contribution, coordinated by Giulia Bergamo (Research Fellow AGREE) and under the scientific supervision of Mesut Dinler (Assistant Professor and AGREE Co-Investigator), was structured over an eight-week period, alternating practical spatial analysis activities with theoretical deep dives and critical reflection.
The main activities focused on collecting and comparing data related to cultural heritage (both point-based and widespread), protected urban areas, flood risk zones, and natural areas in the three case studies (Lillehammer, Hull, and Moncalieri). This included the progressive construction of thematic GIS layers using open-source tools (QGIS) and adhering to European INSPIRE standards. Concurrently, the selected students were encouraged to critically analyze national and international dataset structures, aiming to identify limitations, gaps, and potentials of existing geographic information systems and understand the criteria and needs underlying their organization.
In the initial weeks, each student worked independently on one case study, culminating in a shared phase where data were overlaid in a single multilayer system, offering a stratified and complex reading of the urban landscape and associated climate risks. The ultimate goal is to organize the collected data into integrated and comparable attribute tables common to the three case studies, supporting an inclusive and unified GIS model. The students also participated in meetings with international partners from Hull and Lillehammer, experiencing firsthand the collaborative dynamics of the project and engaging with experts and researchers from different contexts.
Throughout the process, several significant challenges emerged, prompting reflection. Among these were data accessibility and transparency: in some contexts, information is easily downloadable and accessible even to non-expert users, thanks to well-structured portals with clear metadata and intuitive visualization tools. In other cases, access is restricted to institutional actors or requires complex authorization procedures. There are also instances where data are not digitized or organized in georeferenced formats, complicating any form of spatial analysis. Existing datasets are sometimes constructed according to sectoral logics and criteria that hinder integration with other information levels or feature interfaces that are not user-friendly, catering more to specialists than to a broader or interdisciplinary audience. One of the most significant obstacles identified is the heterogeneity of protection criteria: the primary difficulty lies in comparing protection systems that, from country to country, adopt profoundly different definitions, regulatory tools, and classification methods. In some contexts, the concept of "cultural asset" is linked to a closed list of individually cataloged buildings, often protected at multiple levels (local, regional, national, or even international) and accompanied by detailed information such as conservation status, risk vulnerability, or current use. In other cases, available databases offer much less detail: some report only assets protected before a certain date or recognized according to a single formal criterion (e.g., a declaration of interest), without corresponding to actual or updated protection measures. This makes it extremely challenging to construct shared and comparable categories, as data do not always reflect the complexity or actual stratification of existing protections. Sometimes, delineations do not align with actual territorial conditions, and essential elements like classification concerning risk or urban pressure are missing elements present in other case studies. This heterogeneity extends to metadata: some datasets provide in-depth information on ownership, extent, or function of assets, while others are limited to spatial placement without interpretive context. This initial comparison underscores the need for data management through constant technical and conceptual mediation and reinterpretation, achieved by cross-reading the different case studies. Another layer of complexity in model construction arises from morphological and territorial differences among the case studies, significantly influencing the relationship between heritage and environmental risk. The territory's morphology—particularly altimetric variations, hydrographic network distribution, and land use—directly impacts the location and vulnerability of cultural assets, as well as the adaptation strategies implemented over time. Cities situated in plains, for example, exhibit hydraulic risk dynamics distinct from those in hilly areas or regions with significant elevation changes, reflected in the distribution of protected areas, asset density, and the structure and accessibility of related data. Moreover, it's evident that the geomorphological context affects planning policies and the capacity of local institutions to effectively integrate heritage and resilience into territorial governance decisions. The geographical heterogeneity of the three examined case studies has thus necessitated a continuous methodological adaptation effort, aimed at developing analytical tools that are both cross-cutting and sensitive to local specificities. Finally, as highlighted in the project's initial phase, persistent tensions remain between traditional heritage conservation approaches and the urgency of integrating climate change adaptation strategies. Protection systems often rely on rigid regulatory frameworks and a static-monumental vision of cultural assets, struggling to engage with the transformations demanded by new environmental scenarios. Heritage inclusion in adaptation plans is frequently marginal or occurs through fragmented models where conservation needs overshadow the potential for evolution and resilience in historic spaces. This contradiction is also evident in available data: datasets explicitly connecting a site's historical value with its risk exposure level or concrete adaptation measures are rare. In other instances, heritage is the focus of innovative initiatives attempting to reconcile preservation and transformation, but these remain exceptions, often tied to the sensitivity of individual entities or recent project experimentation. In this context, there's a pressing need for a critical revision of protection tools and categories to pave the way for more flexible, integrated, and forward-looking practices.
The work accomplished not only provides valuable research support but also represents a significant educational experience for the two students, who will have the opportunity to present their contributions to international partners in an upcoming project session, sharing their journey and reflecting on the value of an interdisciplinary approach to heritage and climate research.
Currently, the collaborators are engaged in the final phase of their journey, focusing on compiling common attribute tables for each identified category. This step is crucial for constructing the unified GIS model, a central output of WP2, which will be utilized in subsequent project stages to develop a decision-making model based on the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) concept. The GIS model's construction is grounded in identifying thematic macro-categories capable of standardizing and making diverse data comparable. The working group has selected, collected, and systematized the most significant available databases for each case study, categorizing them into macro areas. This selection was based on open data portals, WMS services, institutional repositories, and regional or national geoportals. This process has enabled the creation of a homogeneous informational base and the preparation of common attribute tables, a fundamental step for integrating information into GIS models and making them usable in a comparative perspective.
