Emergency Response to Damaged Architectural Heritage: Time, Safety and Conservation

The balance between conservation and safety is always a tough issue when dealing with built heritage. Especially in emergency conditions – after an earthquake or a war – an effective balance between cultural and structural issues is difficult to reach because of the urgency of securing a huge number of damaged buildings and monuments. In these cases, several first aid interventions turned out to be harmful or ineffective for the conservation of historic buildings, as they were realized looking only for short term stability requirements. However, Italian Guidelines suggest the possible use of first aid techniques as definitive interventions because of their reversibility, feature highly recommended in restoration interventions. Therefore, emergency techniques were studied in order to define a methodological approach for securing the built cultural heritage in consideration of both structural and preservative issues. In the specific, the most widespread techniques used as provisional reinforcement in the 2012 Emilia earthquake were analyzed, considering their structural efficiency and their compliance with the conservation principles. To this purpose, some examples are presented, underlying criticalities and potentialities. This analysis highlights that the design of urgent interventions cannot address only to the emergency phase, but it must be considered as a part of the overall conservation process, that goes from the survey of damages to the final restoration. In this regard, the management system and response plans deeply influence the effectiveness of first aid on architectural heritage. Some consideration about effective methods to balance structural and conservative issues in emergency conditions are presented, as a hint to improve awareness and emergency preparedness.