By now you would have heard about the terrible fire that consumed the Brazil National Museum which destroyed the largest museum collection in Latin America. The emerging story is that poor maintenance and funding cuts played a large role into this disaster of cultural heritage. The tragedy in Brazil could just as easily happen in Southeast Asia – just this year, we already saw fires at the Jakarta Maritime Museum and the National Archives of the Philippines. In this light I want to share some resources in Disaster Risk Management for cultural heritage that might be useful reading.
- ICOMOS-ICORP: The International Scientific Committee on Risk Preparedness under ICOMOS has a great page of documents and publications that can be downloaded, such as:
- A Guide to Risk Management of Cultural Heritage, ICCROM, 2016
- Managing Disaster Risks for World Heritage, UNESCO, 2010
- Disaster Risk Management of Cultural Heritage in Urban Areas, Research Center for Disaster Mitigation of Urban Cultural Heritage, Ritsumeikan University (RitsDMUCH), 2013
- IFLA Emergency Preparedness Planning for Library Collections: Development of a Program and Lessons Learned
- UNISDR: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has a page dedicated to cultural heritage. There is supposed to be a publication, but the link isn’t working at this time.
- UNESCO Endangered Heritage: Emergency Evacuation of Heritage Collections: Free download from the UNESCO website.
2019: I’ve started a dedicated page for resources in Disaster Risk Management
