Optimizing historic preservation under climate change: Decision support for cultural resource adaptation planning in national parks

Abstract

Climate change poses great challenges for cultural resource management, particularly in coastal areas. Cultural resources, such as historic buildings, in coastal areas are vulnerable to climate impacts including inundation, deterioration, and destruction from sea-level rise and storm-related flooding and erosion. However, research that assesses the trade-offs between actions for protecting vulnerable and valuable cultural resources under budgetary constraints is limited. This study focused on developing a decision support model for managing historic buildings at Cape Lookout National Seashore. We designed the Optimal Preservation Decision Support (OptiPres) model to: (a) identify optimal, annual adaptation actions for historic buildings across a 30-year planning horizon, (b) quantify trade-offs between different actions and the timing of adaptation actions under constrained budgets, and (c) estimate the effectiveness of budget allocations on the resource value of historic buildings. Our analysis of the model suggests that: (1) funding allocation thresholds may exist for national parks to maintain the historical significance and use potential of historic buildings under climate change, (2) the quantitative assessment of trade-offs among alternative adaptation actions provides generalizable guidance for decision makers about the dynamics of their managed system, and (3) the OptiPres model can identify cost-efficient approaches to allocate funding to maintain the historical value of buildings vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Therefore, the OptiPres model, while not designed as a prescriptive decision tool, allows managers to understand the consequences of proposed adaptation actions. The OptiPres model can guide park managers to make costeffective climate adaptation decisions for historic buildings more transparently and robustly.

Adapting cultural heritage to climate change impacts in the Netherlands: barriers, interdependencies, and strategies for overcoming them

“…To date, most research has focused on developing frameworks, tools, or methods to assess climate risks and vulnerabilities of diverse cultural heritage types (Fatorić and Seekamp 2017a). While these studies make a crucial step in recognising climate change risks and raising awareness, there have been limited efforts to understand the design of feasible adaptation measures, and the governance challenges encountered in implementation to increase cultural heritage resilience (Dupont and Van Eetvelde 2013;Fatorić and Seekamp 2019;Xiao et al 2019). Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify the different types of barriers that arise in the adaptation process in order to bridge the gap between climate change science and climate change adaptation planning and implementation for cultural heritage.…”

Monitoring Climate Change in World Heritage Properties: Evaluating Landscape-Based Approach in the State of Conservation System

“…Consequently, some studies have highlighted the importance of developing and operationalising landscape-based management frameworks to enable the safeguarding of heritage values and attributes while at the same time allowing for change [49,66]. However, discussion on the thresholds of 'acceptable change' remains at an early stage, particularly on the topics of climate change mitigation and adaptation fields [65,[67][68][69]; a larger focus has been on socioeconomic development and its impacts on WH properties [70][71][72].…”

Historic preservation priorities for climate adaptation

“…Scholars have only recently began studying how to inform adaptation planning and decision-making processes for prioritizing vulnerable historic buildings. For example, Fatori� c and Seekamp (2018) created a novel decision support framework for transparent prioritization of historic buildings based on measurement of buildings' historical significance and use potential; this framework was integrated by Xiao et al (2019) into an optimization model that also considered adaptation costs and dynamic vulnerability, condition and integrity data during a 30-year planning horizon. Daly (2014) introduced a values-focused approach for evaluating exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of built heritage to more holistically inform adaptation prioritization process.…”

“…Furthermore, Ortiz et al (2014) developed a risk mapping approach combining monuments and historic buildings' vulnerability of materials and structural characteristics with frequency and intensity of various hazards to help guide decisions on prioritizing adaptation actions. Although these studies fill an important knowledge gap on climate adaptation prioritization, the majority of them focus solely on advancing quantitative methodologies and frameworks for evaluating vulnerability or spatial characterization of risks to climate change, rather than including value-based considerations (with exceptions of Daly, 2014;Fatori� c and Seekamp, 2018;Gandini et al, 2018;Xiao et al, 2019).…”

“…Although policy is typically written to enable flexibility, details are lacking for prioritization when diverse heritage are equally vulnerable and equally significant, are highly vulnerable but of low significance, or have low vulnerability but are of high significance. As such, researchers are beginning to address this issue by developing measurement frameworks (Fatori� c and Seekamp, 2018), risk analysis frameworks (Carmichael et al, 2018), citizen science projects to identify and monitor cultural heritage (Graham, Hambly and Dawson 2017) and optimization models for climate adaptation planning (Xiao et al, 2019). Though relevant and important for informing management decisions, these approaches often require extensive data gathering, which may not be time sensitive to coastal adaptation decision-making that occurs when funding is available.…”