Routledge Handbook on Cultural Heritage and Disaster Risk Management

This Handbook provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the intersections between cultural heritage and disaster risks. It serves as a defining reference, presenting the key concepts and policy arena that disaster risk management and cultural heritage currently operate.

With 22 contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, chapters explore the various contexts for cultural heritage and disaster risk management, illustrated through case studies from around the world. The Handbook is organised into 4 parts: Part 1 includes Disaster Risk Management and Cultural Heritage, Part 2 helps to Understanding the context, Part 3 focuses on the challenges and Part 4 delves deep into the future prospects. This Handbook provides insights a wide range of topics and themes, such as climate change, conflict, urbanisation, the role of community, and examines the relationships with a range of sectors such as governance and policy, finance, infrastructure, shelter, and urban planning. It also presents critiques on issues that are often taken for granted, including technocratic approaches, nature/culture binary, the romanticisation of traditional knowledges and the role of recovery and reconstruction. Insights into the future are also presented, and the Handbook concludes with a detailed agenda of proposed action to be taken in the field.

Offering critical reflections on the topic, this book caters to students, researchers, professionals, and policy makers in the fields of disaster studies, cultural studies, heritage studies, conservation and geography.

Rohit Jigyasu is a conservation architect and risk management professional from India, currently working at ICCROM as Project Manager on Urban Heritage, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management. Rohit served as UNESCO Chair holder professor at the Institute for Disaster Mitigation of Urban Cultural Heritage at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan, where he was instrumental in developing and teaching International Training Course on Disaster Risk Management of Cultural Heritage. He was the elected President of ICOMOS-India from 2014-2018 and president of ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Risk Preparedness (ICORP) from 2010-2019. Rohit served as the Elected Member of the Executive Committee of ICOMOS since 2011 and was its Vice President from 2017-2020. Before joining ICCROM, Rohit has been working with several national and international organizations such as UNESCO, UNISDR, Getty Conservation Institute and World Bank for consultancy, research and training on Disaster Risk Management of Cultural Heritage.

Ksenia Chmutina is a Professor of Disaster Studies at the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering at Loughborough University. Her research focuses on the processes of urban disaster risk creation and systemic implications of sustainability and resilience in the context of neoliberalism. Her research interests also include narratives and framings of disasters, intersectionality and vulnerability, and interlinkages between critical urban studies, cultural heritage, and disaster studies. A core part of her activities is science communication: she is a co-host of a popular podcast ‘Disasters: Deconstructed’. Ksenia uses her work to draw attention to the fact that disasters are not natural.