Danger and anthropic risk for Cultural Heritage. Contributions to interdisciplinary reflection

Abstract

Considerations about risk factors for cultural heritage are generally focused on natural disasters, while the relationship between disasters and human activities is rarely mentioned.

In the international context, what’s mainly considered is the heritage of outstanding universal value, while the Italian experience of the Risk Map examines a broader and more complex set of assets, assessing their risk based on knowledge of the territorial dangers and the vulnerabilities of assets themselves.

In this scenario, the definition of anthropic dangerousness remains an unsolved problem; the aspects so far analysed are not sufficient to evaluate a multiform phenomenon, and the lack of measurable indicators means that this risk component is underestimated, while the degradation caused by man continues to spread regardless of abandonment situations.

Leaving aside the relationship (although it exists) between natural disasters and anthropic activities, here we focus on direct harmful actions and the indirect effects of damage on architectural heritage. Through an inductive procedure, starting from the identification of the anthropic degradation phenomena (with the purpose of then observing their location, frequency and severity), we aim to identify potentially harmful activities in order to represent hazard maps on urban scale and to define an “hazard classification code”. The application in the centre of Rome analyses the flows and intensities of “city users” in the Trastevere area.