Built environment and cultural heritage identity and preservation. Safety solutions, mitigation strategies and prevention before and after the damages

Natural and anthropic hazards on heritage and built environment, their consequences, and, most of all, their impact on society in terms of damage cannot mostly be removed. However, the limits of tolerance to their effects should be increased, reducing the level of potential disaster. Pursuing this aim, the international project “After the Damages - Prevention and safety solutions through design and practice on existing built environment. The Italian experience” was launched, starting as an advanced training project and now an International Academy focused on disaster management. Starting from the experience gained in postdisaster reconstruction by the involved partners and the experience of disaster management, the project brings together an international and interdisciplinary team of experts. The overall project aim is to highlight recent innovations and advancements in the post-disaster management by providing the most up-to-date expertise to enable participants to play an active role in disaster risk management and respond more effectively through mitigation strategies. The two editions of the After the Damages project focused on a comparison between different procedures adopted in crises situations’ management, explained by experts from all over the world, who shared their knowledge and experiences on calamitous events and risk management. Earthquakes and flooding mitigation strategies, governance actions, socio-economic aspects, and the most advanced technologies for survey, documentation, monitoring and assessment on built environment are among the main topics of the project. This wide international participation allowed the comparison among different contexts, different kinds of risk and different approaches to mitigation, assessing specific case studies to achieve a real understanding on practical crisis conditions, research and application methods. Concluded and ongoing construction sites were presented as best practices by the project partners to demonstrate the commitment and complexity of the intervention on the existing built environment when a disastrous event occurs. The topic is extremely broad, since many aspects must be addressed starting from the emergency phase, to post-emergency assessment and monitoring actions, up to the recovery of the built environment and the adaptation of the communities to a new condition of sociality and accessibility.