Research project Climate change damages cultural heritage in Sweden through flooding, erosion, fire, drought, mould, pests, etc. Even the green transition will cause damage. But there is no system for prioritizing which places should be saved or allowed to be lost. Through interviews and surveys to cultural heritage managers at the county administrative boards, municipalities and at the national level, as well as GIS analyses, we will increase understanding and suggest solutions to this problem.
This project studies the views of public antiquarian representatives on the prioritization of cultural-historical remains threatened by climate change, including collaboration preferences and methods of selection for sustainable management and protection. Results from in-depth interviews, questionnaires and case-based exercises will be used to design a prototype GIS-based decision system connected to national databases. The project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology, human geography and political science at Umeå University, as well as Haninge municipality and industry.
The Swedish National Heritage Board
Dr. Hans Antonson
Camilla Eriksson, Haninge kommun
Climate change negatively affects cultural and historical monuments and landscapes through erosion, crushing damage, fire, drought, mould, fungi, pests and more. In a previous research project funded by the Swedish Transport Administration, one of our conclusions was that "Effective planning requires clarity about which types of cultural environments, including landscapes, should be climate-adapted (e.g. protected or documented) to a changing climate. Prioritisation is required”.
International research on how to prioritize among cultural heritage at risk of disappearing as a result of climate change is unusual. Instruments for evaluating cultural heritage range from disaster planning in archives and museums to the US National Parks Service's 'four pillars' approach (science, mitigation, adaptation, communication).
In Sweden, there is a general lack of agreement regarding how prioritization should be undertaken, what should be prioritized over what should be lost. There is little understanding of how the antiquarian sector's public representatives think about scale and regional differences. We want to build on our previous results and create a design for the development of a decision support system around prioritization and climate threats.
The project's results will increase national and local preparedness as well as consider different types of conflicting goals. A prototype for a GIS-based decision support system will be designed for the future development of a national system for support in decisions regarding the prioritization of threatened cultural heritage. This will be able to be connected to national systems for handling archaeological data that are being developed in the SweDigArch infrastructure (www.swedigarch.se).
