Risk Analysis and Vulnerability Assessment of Archeological Areas for the Preventive Conservation

The territorial structure of archaeological sites is often compromised by a variety of factors which, over time, can contribute to aggravate the deteriorating conditions of the archaeological areas. Natural disasters, often, have caused irreversible damage (crashes, loss of finds, etc.) at the archeological sites. The paper shows the results of research aimed at developing an innovative risk assessment model, oriented to sustainability criteria, that can provide help in making decisions process about the protection, conservation and valorisation of archaeological areas. The proposed work presents a logical and operative model suitable to estimate the actual risk condition for archeological sites developed by integrating the information concerning vulnerability of archeological areas and the danger condition of the sites upon which they are located. The determination of the risk, derived from the evaluation of potential co-presence of independent sources of danger within a given geographical area, has been modeled by a type of approach multi hazard.

The methodology is applied at the case study of archaeological area of Sybari in Calabria Region, in south of Italy, where tried to develop an integrated and coordinated cognitive methodology - evaluation within an overall information system for assessing the vulnerability of archaeological heritage and environmental dangerousness in order to identify the level of risk which is under the archaeological area in relation to the territory of reference.

The results obtained allow to relate the risk with the risk factors, the detection of damage on archaeological heritage in question, determine the tolerance threshold within which it is possible the preservation of goods and to propose a synthesis strategy between environmental protection and sustainable exploitation.