ID: 2041
Presenting Author: Courtney Hotchkiss
Session: 606 - Climate change impact assessments for cultural heritage: bridging informational gaps
Status: pending
A fictional heritage site is used as an example to show misalignment of observational, measurement, and operational scales with each other, as well as at spatial and temporal scales.
Climate change impacts occurring at heritage sites are forcing managers to rethink how sites are conserved and cared for, a complex task for dynamic, “living” places. Climate risks at heritage sites can range from slow accumulation to extreme weather events, and a combination of climate data, simulations, and observation are used to anticipate how a site might be impacted. Assessment of climate risks at a heritage site is a crucial aspect of understanding how hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and responses interact. Current approaches to risk assessment evaluate the scales of climate data, heritage processes, and governance decisions implicitly, leading to misalignments that limit how effectively risks are identified, interpreted, and managed. Considering challenges related to scale can help create more realistic and equitable plans for heritage places.
For this session, a fictional heritage site is used as an example to show misalignment of observational, measurement, and operational scales with each other, as well as how they mismatch at spatial and temporal scales. The observational scale defines the boundary and timeframe of a risk assessment. The measurement scale considers different data resolutions, from global climate models to site-level monitoring. The operational scale represents those of underlying processes, from short-term to multi-generational knowledge transmission.
Courtney Hotchkiss is a postdoctoral researcher at NC State University (US) working on the SASCHA project. Her research interests include climate change impacts at heritage sites.
Coauthor 1: Erin Seekamp