Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam (NL)12-14 May 2013

Learning from Mistakes:A Different Strategy for

Cultural Heritage Crisis Managementin Post-Disaster Areas

(Italy 2009 – 2012)

Alessandro Califano

In the night of 6 April 2009 the Italian region of Abruzzi was devastated by an earthquake

Around 300 people died, and destruction hit a vast number of private homes...

...public buildings both old and new...

...as well as a large amount of historical buildings and cultural institutions

ICOM Italy

Immediately wrote out a call to its members Set up the Cultural Heritage High Risks

Commission in a matter of days Set up an emergency restoration centre at the

Museum of Celano after a few weeks Effectively cooperated with Fire brigades, a

large national association of volunteers, and local boards for over a year

Storage of damaged artefacts at the Museum of Celano (MUSè), 2009

In May 2012 the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna was also hit by an earthquake

Though victims were few, the regional economy was strongly hit...

In 2012, destruction mostly hit productive implants as well as historical buildings

A quantitative analysis

Considering only the historical buildings in the four affected provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio Emilia we have these figures:

Bologna: 203 Ferrara: 94 Modena: 126 Reggio Emilia: 106

In this case, however...

ICOM Italy's Cultural Heritage High Risks Commission didn't even send out a Call for Action to its members

Rescue attempts of historical buildings and museum artefacts were mostly undertaken by the fire and emergency brigades

Even trying to obtain a list of what existed, and what had been damaged was – for weeks! – almost impossible

Reasons for failure in 2012:

Though State driven actions were much more coordinated and effective than in 2009, too much reliance on local administrations by the High Risks Commission proved to be a week point, slowing down the whole rescue process

Regional geographic databases proved to be not homogeneous enough, making combined rescue efforts based on common knowledge almost impossible to achieve

Moreover:

The trend to regionalize the model of action of ICOM Italy – though it is the Italian Chapter of an international professional organization – has significantly weakened its potential effectiveness

This same trend has made the ties the High Risks Commission had with other international bodies and programmes – like ICOMOS or Blue Shield – less effective

Into the Future – Crowdsourcing

In the Editor's note of the 15 June 2012 edition of “The Museum Studies Weekly” I wrote:

The Commission's failure in the present occasion calls for a redefinition of its role...

It should … re-programme its mission as a facilitator of grass roots action, and focus on the documentation of damages.

A crowd sourcing based approach would allow both laymen and new stakeholders to step in...

Into the Future – Broadcast & FOSS

From this point of view, an excellent work has been done in post-disaster areas by – even very small – local audio broadcasting stations.

A crucial stakeholder, in the aftermath of the 2012 earthquake, has been an open group of ICT people, Hackathon Terremoto, who shortly after the earthquake started delivering detailed information about FOSS based tools to keep track of events and give feedback from post-disaster areas.

Mobile Apps and G-FOSS

“Bring the Food” (L) is a crowd-sourcing web mobile App for surplus food redistribution

“OpenStreet Map” (R) is a G-FOSS with free geographic data and versatile tagging features

Crowdsourcing – Mobile Field Alerts 1/2

“GeoSDIgeoPoints” allows visual and textual info delivered from smartphones

Crowdsourcing – Mobile Field Alerts 2/2

Georeferenced pictures of an event can be sent from any smartphone to a geographic database through a downloadable App.

A short description of the event can be chosen from a list, with further data added by the user, or by the system (date, time, etc.).

The geographic database is then updated on the run, and the info – visible to all users as a geographic repository – becomes immediately usable by rescue teams and any other public stakeholder.

Conclusions

Neither FOSS nor risk awareness can of course altogether avoid disasters of all kinds, and their tragic consequences.

Nevertheless, learning from our mistakes, and developing better tools and more effective strategies, will let us look with confidence towards the challenges that tomorrow might bring us.

Thank you!