
LUC completes assessment of climate change risk to Fingal’s cultural heritage
LUC has completed a project assessing the impact of natural hazards and climate change on the cultural heritage of Fingal County Council.
Alongside the final project report, the outputs are presented in a user-friendly interactive map to aid the exploration of the findings. AMS and TOBIN supported LUC’s GIS and Historic Environment teams.
The assessment methodology builds on Historic Environment Scotland‘s approach and LUC’s similar projects. We thoroughly reviewed spatial datasets of Fingal cultural heritage designations. We also looked at datasets showing the extent of six natural hazards, including:
- fluvial flooding,
- pluvial flooding,
- groundwater flooding,
- coastal flooding,
- coastal erosion and
- land instability.
The susceptibility of heritage assets to these natural hazards is an indicator of their potential vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Therefore, climate change is referred to as a natural hazard ‘risk multiplier’.
The review identified data limitations which ensured we used the most suitable datasets. The engagement of the Project Steering Group – involving experts from Fingal County Council, Geological Survey Ireland, Dublin Metropolitan CARO and CHERISH – benefited our work. Our project highlighted the importance of high-quality data and the involvement of an expert Steering Group on this type of specialist project.
This was the first assessment of its kind in Ireland. It provides a baseline on heritage asset vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change that will allow other Local Authorities and organisations to undertake similar assessments and monitoring.
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