SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Dina D’AYALA is a Professor at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London (UCL). She holds the UNESCO Chair in Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering. She is the Co-Director of the UCL EPICentre and the UCL East Structures and Environment Laboratory (StrEnThE). She is a Director of the International Association for Earthquake Engineering (IAEE) and a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). She is also an elected member of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on the Analysis and Restoration of Structures of Architectural Heritage (ISCARSAH). She served as the Chair of the European COST Action FP1101 "Assessment, Reinforcement and Monitoring of Timber Structures."

BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Heritage buildings worldwide are protected by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). As an intergovernmental organization, UNESCO operates primarily based on the "Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage" adopted in 1972. It identifies, protects, and preserves cultural and natural heritage of outstanding value to humanity worldwide. Specific measures include establishing the "World Heritage List" and sets of management and protection guidelines that inscribed heritage sites must follow to maintain their status.

ICOMOS is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the conservation and protection of cultural heritage sites worldwide. It is the only global non-governmental organization committed to applying scientific techniques, theories, and methodologies to the conservation of architectural and archaeological heritage. To provide reference for heritage protection globally and support interdisciplinary teams in using advanced technical knowledge from structural engineering to ensure heritage safety, ISCARSAH drafted the ISCARSAH Guidelines and adopted several related principles in 2003. These guidelines and principles apply to all heritage sites inscribed on global, national, regional, and local protection lists. Recently, ISCARSAH completed a new version of the Guidelines, released in May 2025, which will be submitted for approval at the next ICOMOS General Assembly.

This lecture will discuss the methodologies and recommendations in the new Guidelines regarding heritage risk assessment. The risks considered originate from climate and geophysical hazards under different environments and conditions, which threaten the safety and integrity of heritage sites. The lecture will specifically discuss which tools can be used in practice to collect qualitative and quantitative information regarding the "past life" of heritage sites, thereby completing the diagnosis and safety evaluation of the heritage.