Capacity building for preparedness and risk management: an integrated approach for Bagan built heritage

According to the global assessment report on disaster risk reduction, prepared in 2015 by the United Nation Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the economic losses resulting from disasters has been calculated to be about $250-300 billion per year. This situation clearly evidences the importance of developing effective documentation strategies able to support the reduction and preparedness ex ante and ex post catastrophic events. Appropriate acquisition of information can effectively provide tools for decision-making process, risk preparedness and management. This information has to take into consideration different aspects including: geometry, shape, color, building materials, construction systems, relative building condition, patterns of past repair and cultural aspects. In line with these considerations a multidisciplinary team - including students and faculty members from Carleton University and Yangon Technological University, as well as staff from the Department of Archeology, National Museum and Library (DoA) and professionals from the CyArk foundation - developed a coordinated strategy to document four temples in the site of Bagan (Myanmar). The information acquired during the field work has been processed in order to elaborate a solid base for the conservation and monitoring of the documented temples. The site of Bagan, strongly affected by several seismic events and other natural hazards, provided an excellent case study to test the effectiveness of the proposed approach, to prevent and manage the damages of catastrophic events and to support retrofitting actions. The research was articulated into three phases. The first phase consisted in setting up a documentation methodology to identify, prioritize and mitigate on-going disturbances and threats to the Bagan built heritage. Within this context, advanced 3D photogrammetric and Laser Scanning techniques as well as Electronic Distance Meter Measurement (EDM) applications for recording the “as found condition” have been experimented on the field. At the same time a detailed assessment of the conditions of the four temple has been developed in order to prevent further damages and mitigating their effects. In this phase, the analysis of the character defining elements of each temple has also been developed. The second phase consisted in the processing of the recorded information. The final phase involved the assessment of the adopted approach, techniques and tools employed and the development of recommendations for the replicability of the adopted methodology. The temples, different for architectural design, shape, geometry and affected by different kinds of natural hazards (such as flooding, earthquake and anthropic pressures) have been selected in order to test the flexibility of the adopted methodology, techniques and tools.