The work carried out combined conceptual development, methodological innovation, and empirical analysis, to explore the intersection of cultural heritage, disaster management, and digital technologies.
Development of a people-centered conceptual framework articulating the role of social media in heritage conservation and community resilience in the context of climate change. The framework advocates for more inclusive and locally contextualized practices by engaging communities in the co-construction of heritage values and enhancing multivocality through digital platforms. It highlights the transformative role of digitally mediated heritage practices, from digitization and crowdsourcing to active community participation in crisis response.
Development of a multidimensional framework for the assessment of cultural heritage vulnerability to flood hazards. In this framework, cultural heritage is framed within a landscape approach drawing on the concept of the historic urban landscape as a physical entity, a lived space and a layered socioeconomic environment. The framework integrates built and natural heritage with area-based vulnerability and socioeconomic deprivation, considering households' exposure to flood risk. This involved a systematic review of existing methods, indicator development, data collection, and spatial analysis using GIS-based tools.
Social media data collection and analysis, including Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). The analysis aimed to investigate the role of grassroots mobilizations on social media in building community resilience and addressing specific challenges during disaster events. Several methods were applied for the analysis of textual and visual data. For textual data, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) from the topicmodels package was used for topic modelling. In addition, the CardiffNLP RoBERTa-based model was used in Python to conduct sentiment analysis. For visual data, analysis was conducted using ChatGPT-4, a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) model, which was used to generate descriptions, categorise images, and extract emotional tone from photos shared on Instagram.
Interviews with Facebook group administrators whose groups were initiated in response to the crisis and who were actively engaged in mobilizing community members. The questionnaire consisted of five sections addressing: (1) the purpose of social media use during the crisis; (2) the role of social media in building community and coordinating efforts to address specific challenges; (3) perceived community support and interaction on social media; (4) the impact of online interactions on offline support; and (5) the role of social media in showcasing community resilience and unity during the crisis.
The main achievements of the project include:
A conceptual and methodological foundation for integrating digital platforms into heritage conservation and resilience planning, promoting inclusive engagement, co-construction of values, and grassroots mobilization.
A validated multidimensional vulnerability assessment framework, offering a replicable methodology for understanding the association between cultural heritage vulnerability, socioeconomic deprivation and area-based vulnerability, supporting the identification of historic urban landscape qualities and priority areas for reconstruction and social support.
A methodological workflow for textual and visual analysis of social media data shared during disaster events.
Empirical evidence demonstrating the potential of social media as a data source and transformative tool supporting heritage conservation, community resilience and disaster recovery.
Three open-access datasets supporting replication and further research.
