Historic Urban Landscapes at Risk: Global Monitoring and Assessment of Emerging Crises in UNESCO World Heritage Properties

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Abstract
Despite the growing recognition of heritage risk reduction, a comprehensive framework for multi-risk assessment remains notably absent within the context of historic urban landscapes (HULs) across diverse global contexts. This paper aims to fill this gap by developing an assessment framework to address multiple emerging risks in HUL management, considering climate-related, human-induced, and mixed hazards in UNESCO World Heritage properties. A four-step process is established—hazard identification, exposure categorisation, adaptation capacity-building, and vulnerability monitoring and evaluation. Using content analysis, this framework is applied to official reports from 33 World Heritage HUL cases across 33 countries. The results show that, although various hazards have been acknowledged by state parties, local governments prioritise human-induced or natural hazards more often than mixed hazards, leading to a shortage of comprehensive risk management plans and practical actions in most cases. Regarding heritage adaptation, the factors of capacity and governance are widely addressed, demonstrating the commitment of state parties to formulate strategies and solve problems. However, public participation and education practices remain insufficiently implemented, resulting in a relatively low degree of adaptation capacity-building. The proposed multi-risk assessment framework offers a crucial reference for global urban heritage management and risk reduction.
Funding Information
  • Natural Science Foundation for Young Scientists of Shanxi Province (52508039)
  • the General Project of the Humanities and Social Science Research of the Ministry of Education, China (23YJC760055)
  • Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan province, China (25QNJJ4773)

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