Urban Heritage Resilience: An Integrated and Operationable Definition from the SHELTER and ARCH Projects

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript should be reorganized for better expression.

This manuscript seems like a report, rather than a technical article. The first three sections of “Materials and Methods” should be a review, not a method.

Please indicate the innovation of SHELTER and ARCH frameworks, and explain the significance of two frameworks.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript, which we have carefully considered - also in light of the feedback from the other three reviewers. Please find our responses to your comments below.

• This manuscript should be reorganized for better expression.
• This manuscript seems like a report, rather than a technical article. The first three sections of “Materials and Methods” should be a review, not a method.

We appreciate your suggestions and have carefully considered them. We understand the importance of clear expression, and we have made efforts to ensure the manuscript is well-organized and coherent. But, considering the positive feedback from the other three reviewers and the journal’s prescribed section naming and structure, we believe the current organization effectively conveys our research. We also acknowledge your concern regarding the format of the “Materials and Methods” section. The structure and content of this section were designed to align with the journal’s guidelines and to provide a comprehensive understanding of our methodology. We believe that the detailed description is essential for replicability and transparency in our research.

• Please indicate the innovation of SHELTER and ARCH frameworks, and explain the significance of two frameworks.

We have added a few sentences at the beginning of section 3.2 (Lines 307-320) to make the innovations of the frameworks and accompanying methods, tools, and indicators clearer.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper. The article is interesting; the researched problem has scientific potential and may be of interest to potential readers.

The paper effectively bridges various fields, such as urban planning, heritage conservation, and disaster risk management, offering a holistic framework for understanding urban resilience. By adopting a systemic approach, the authors underscore the interconnectedness of resilience across different dimensions—social, cultural, economic, and environmental.

The paper is well-organized, with clear sections dedicated to defining key concepts (resilience and sustainability) and explaining their application to urban heritage. The presentation of SHELTER and ARCH frameworks offers a medium level of detail suitable for both researchers and practitioners. The paper does an excellent job of differentiating between generalized resilience (all-hazards approach) and specific resilience (focused on particular hazards). This distinction is essential for the nuanced understanding of resilience within urban heritage contexts.

Although I evaluate the paper positively, I suggest you consider the following points:

·         One of the paper's shortcomings is its narrow focus on European pilot sites. Although the SHELTER and ARCH frameworks have been applied in diverse European contexts, the paper would benefit from exploring how these frameworks could be adapted to non-European urban heritage environments, which may present different challenges in terms of governance, hazards, and socio-cultural settings. A broader geographical scope would increase the global applicability of the proposed solutions.

·         Although community involvement is emphasized, the paper does not provide insights from the actual stakeholders involved in the pilot projects. Including interviews or survey data from local authorities, planners, and community members who participated in the implementation of the ARCH and SHELTER frameworks would offer valuable real-world feedback, identifying potential gaps or improvements in the approach.

·         The theoretical discussion of resilience is solid, but the paper lacks empirical data or metrics to evaluate the success of the frameworks in practice. For instance, specific outcomes from the pilot projects could be highlighted through resilience indices or key performance indicators (KPIs).

·         Pay attention to missing references. Throughout the text, there are several instances where the references or figures are incorrectly cited (e.g., "Error! Reference source not found."). See lines 118, 199, 249, 266, 282, 459.

·         Some sections of the paper are repetitive, particularly in defining resilience and sustainability. The authors could condense these sections to improve readability without losing critical information.

Overall, the paper is a significant contribution to the field of urban heritage resilience. However, addressing the abovementioned shortcomings would enhance the paper's impact and applicability.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript, which we have carefully considered - also in light of the feedback from the other three reviewers. Please find our responses to your comments below.

• One of the paper's shortcomings is its narrow focus on European pilot sites. Although the SHELTER and ARCH frameworks have been applied in diverse European contexts, the paper would benefit from exploring how these frameworks could be adapted to non-European urban heritage environments, which may present different challenges in terms of governance, hazards, and socio-cultural settings. A broader geographical scope would increase the global applicability of the proposed solutions.

We agree completely with this assessment! Unfortunately, the focus of both ARCH and SHELTER was on European heritage sites. An exploration of how these frameworks might be applied to non-European sites would constitute a good next step for additional research.

To address this comment, we have added in the introduction explanatory text, making clear that ARCH and SHELTER have co-developed their frameworks with European (and one Turkish) municipalities / landscapes (Lines 56-59).

We have also added the exploration of how these frameworks could be adapted to the non-European context, together with ICOMOS, ICCROM, UNESCO, and IUCN to the conclusion, mentioning the scoping study for the toolkit on climate action for World Heritage, in which both projects participated (Lines 587-598).

• Although community involvement is emphasized, the paper does not provide insights from the actual stakeholders involved in the pilot projects. Including interviews or survey data from local authorities, planners, and community members who participated in the implementation of the ARCH and SHELTER frameworks would offer valuable real-world feedback, identifying potential gaps or improvements in the approach.

We have added a paragraph in section 3.2 describing the co-development process of the frameworks and provided some examples on the use. As both projects used a very intensive and participatory co-creation approach, no specific interviews were conducted for their development. Rather, needs and feedback was gathered directly from end users in working sessions (Lined 343-365).

• The theoretical discussion of resilience is solid, but the paper lacks empirical data or metrics to evaluate the success of the frameworks in practice. For instance, specific outcomes from the pilot projects could be highlighted through resilience indices or key performance indicators (KPIs).

No specific KPIs / indices that could be published have been gathered. While the municipalities involved in ARCH have conducted a resilience assessment, based on the framework, at the beginning and end of the project, these cannot be officially published due to confidentiality reasons of the municipalities.

Regarding SHELTER, monitoring the co-creation process served to reshape the activities and evaluate if the objectives of the project were being achieved effectively and efficiently while including a diverse group of participants and considering the local needs. Therefore, a monitoring strategy was developed. This strategy was based on a set of indicators tailored to the local needs reflecting inputs, processes, and results of a co-creation process. This tailor-made list was based on indicators belonging to the following categories: (1) collaboration, (2) tools, (3) knowledge exchange, (4) plans, (5) data collection, and (6) assessment. These indicators were considered as a tool to draw lessons about the validation and replicability of SHELTER results. As in the case of ARCH, the results of this co-monitoring are not public.

• Pay attention to missing references. Throughout the text, there are several instances where the references or figures are incorrectly cited (e.g., "Error! Reference source not found."). See lines 118, 199, 249, 266, 282, 459.

This was corrected.

• Some sections of the paper are repetitive, particularly in defining resilience and sustainability. The authors could condense these sections to improve readability without losing critical information.

Thank you for your feedback. We understand the importance of clarity and conciseness in scientific writing. However, the feedback provided is somewhat general, and we would appreciate more specific guidance on which sections or paragraphs you believe could be condensed. This would help us make targeted revisions to improve readability without losing critical information.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article aims to operationalize and integrate the concept of urban resilience in urban planning while reflecting on the different roles of urban heritage. It is based on the materials of the Horizon 2020 projects ARCH and SHELTER.

The manuscript is well-structured and clear. The article is written on a topical topic, has scientific novelty, and will interest specialists in urban planning, urban heritage, and a broader range of scholars.

The references cited are relevant, and no excessive number of self-citations was found. However, the authors should update the literature, as most cited articles appeared earlier than in the last five years.

The methodology is scientifically sound.

Figures and tables are appropriate and clear. However, there is no reference to Fig 1.

The reviewer has the following suggestions for the authors.

1. The article's title contains the phrase Urban Heritage Resilience 3.0, not mentioned anywhere else in the text. What exactly did the authors mean by version 3.0, and what were versions 2.0 and 1.0? This should be explained in the article. The literature analysis gives us an idea but is insufficient.

2.  The authors should write a few sentences explaining why the systematic approach was chosen and indicating the availability and possibility of using other approaches to solve the problem.

 

3. The conclusions need to be improved; they are not sufficiently related to the research results and the article's title. Namely, the findings should contain more generalizations about describing the concept of urban resilience - Urban Heritage Resilience 3.0.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript, which we have carefully considered - also in light of the feedback from the other three reviewers. Please find our responses to your comments below.

• The references cited are relevant, and no excessive number of self-citations was found. However, the authors should update the literature, as most cited articles appeared earlier than in the last five years.

We have added additional, more recent, sources to the paper in section 2.1 (Lined 87-91).

• Figures and tables are appropriate and clear. However, there is no reference to Fig 1.

Figure 1 is now referenced.

• The article's title contains the phrase Urban Heritage Resilience 3.0, not mentioned anywhere else in the text. What exactly did the authors mean by version 3.0, and what were versions 2.0 and 1.0? This should be explained in the article. The literature analysis gives us an idea but is insufficient.

Thank you for pointing this out! To avoid confusion, we have removed the “3.0” from the title.

• The authors should write a few sentences explaining why the systematic approach was chosen and indicating the availability and possibility of using other approaches to solve the problem.

We have added a paragraph to address this comment at the beginning of section 2.1 (Lines 69-74).

• The conclusions need to be improved; they are not sufficiently related to the research results and the article's title. Namely, the findings should contain more generalizations about describing the concept of urban resilience - Urban Heritage Resilience 3.0.

We expanded the second paragraph of the conclusions with a few more findings (Lines 554-566).

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It’s a very good and instructive article, properly settled in the framework of contemporary literature of the topic. The article raises the important problems of contemporary times hidden under the words: sustainability, resilience and cultural heritage protection. The cultural heritage protection rules are well described in the existing law, directives  and manuals. The expression of “sustainability” is quite popular, and broadly used in all world-wide applied development directives, plans and programs. The new idea of  “resilience” in relation to urban planning and management is less known and not widely applied in urban planning code and practice. The Authors, addressing their article to European Projects ARCH and SHELTER as polemics, suggest that the concept of ”urban resilience remains too abstract and lacks sufficient detail to be implemented on the operational level”. They assume that this situation is “hampering the development of tailored actions that go beyond abstract strategic goals”. In the presented article, they like to make the concept of urban resilience “more operationalizable” in urban scale in order to better connect it to “practices of urban planning and management”. They stress that “the resilience need to be kept at the certain degree of universality” to ensure replicability, but at the same time better connected to practices of urban planning and city management.

These theses of the article are reasonable, however they are addressed to the ARCH and SHELTER Projects, which are developed exactly for this purpose, building the concept of the overall approach system. In my opinion the article, however widely exploring the topic, doesn’t provide any new approaches in this matter, telling that both universality of the resilience idea in synergy with cultural heritage protection and sustainability, as its operationalization tailored to the particular cases, are needed.

I appreciate the research question put by the Authors: “How can a concept for urban resilience be described, that is operationalizable and applicable in urban planning and at the same time reflects the various roles of urban heritage related to resilience?”

The Authors have given a solution to this question, by elaboration of analysis of relations between the main sub-subjects (resilience, sustainability, cultural heritage protection). The ARCH and SHELTER projects are giving the detailed schemes and manuals for prevention, action and repair of damages caused by the unexpected disasters. The operational level, in my opinion should not be regulated, but should mean the adjustment to the particular situations. F.e. there is a totally different action needed by extreme heat wave, than by sudden flood caused by heavy rains, and different by flood expected due to rains in the upper parts of the rivers, etc. Every case is different, and surely they could be analyzed, classified and described in detail, but in reality – every case is different and needs also the individually tailored, surely also partly spontaneous interventions.There is also to consider, that in many cases resilience protective measures need to construct much more after the disaster, than only recover to the previous state. The latest aggressive floods in Europe are the proper example of the need of resilience, which should change the urban structure of many cities and infrastructure facilities.

The definition of  the “urban resilience” cited from the Meerow et al. [S. Meerow, J. P. Newell, and M. Stults, “Defining urban resilience: A review,” Landsc Urban Plan, vol. 147, pp. 59238–49, Mar. 2016, doi: 10.1016/J.LANDURBPLAN.2015.11.011.]:

 “Urban resilience refers to the ability of an urban system-and all its constituent socio-ecological and socio-technical networks across temporal and spatial scales-to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity”

-            is very good balanced and dynamic, offering multiple understanding and interpretation possibilities, from “persistence, transition to transformation”. It means, this definition is soft, adjustable, providing a good starting point for more detailed considerations and adoptions to particular needs.

Furthermore, the Authors try to compare the definitions of sustainability, heritage protection and  resilience. In my opinion this comparison doesn’t has any practical implications. These principles (sustainability, cultural heritage protection and  resilience) are covering different situations, deal with different institutions and refer to different planning ranges and scales, put the wages on different values and issues.

Operationalization measurements should consider the extraction of a particular set of hazards for particular areas, places. The “all-hazards approach” is simply not possible for realization and not needed.

It should be mentioned, that the resilience manuals on the operational level should be simplified and taking into account the stress situations in which they are likely to be applied. The black-out situation and impossibility to reach the data systems, should be considered accordingly.

There are some technical remarks, concerning the text of the article, to be improved:

Line 118 error

Line 199 error

Line 266 error

Line 282 error

Line 459 error

Table 3. the last column is too narrow

Line 405, 412 – lack of information

The article has  a great value of bringing near to public the consciousness  of existence of very interestingly developed projects ARCH and SHELTER, encouraging all involved in urban planning and management to consider the given instructions and explanations for preparing adjusted, specific measurements against the unexpected disasters – according to the local circumstances.

The conclusion about the need of further elaboration of frameworks across different local settings, also in other regions than Europe, is pointing the main goal of this study.

In my opinion the article is written in good English, clearly describing the problems.

 

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback on our manuscript, which we have carefully considered - also in light of the feedback from the other three reviewers. Please find our responses to your comments below.

• These theses of the article are reasonable, however they are addressed to the ARCH and SHELTER Projects, which are developed exactly for this purpose, building the concept of the overall approach system. In my opinion the article, however widely exploring the topic, doesn’t provide any new approaches in this matter, telling that both universality of the resilience idea in synergy with cultural heritage protection and sustainability, as its operationalization tailored to the particular cases, are needed.
• I appreciate the research question put by the Authors: “How can a concept for urban resilience be described, that is operationalizable and applicable in urban planning and at the same time reflects the various roles of urban heritage related to resilience?”
  The Authors have given a solution to this question, by elaboration of analysis of relations between the main sub-subjects (resilience, sustainability, cultural heritage protection). The ARCH and SHELTER projects are giving the detailed schemes and manuals for prevention, action and repair of damages caused by the unexpected disasters. The operational level, in my opinion should not be regulated, but should mean the adjustment to the particular situations. F.e. there is a totally different action needed by extreme heat wave, than by sudden flood caused by heavy rains, and different by flood expected due to rains in the upper parts of the rivers, etc. Every case is different, and surely they could be analyzed, classified and described in detail, but in reality – every case is different and needs also the individually tailored, surely also partly spontaneous interventions. There is also to consider, that in many cases resilience protective measures need to construct much more after the disaster, than only recover to the previous state. The latest aggressive floods in Europe are the proper example of the need of resilience, which should change the urban structure of many cities and infrastructure facilities.

We have added additional information in the second paragraph of section 4 (Lines 554-566).

• Furthermore, the Authors try to compare the definitions of sustainability, heritage protection and resilience. In my opinion this comparison doesn’t has any practical implications. These principles (sustainability, cultural heritage protection and resilience) are covering different situations, deal with different institutions and refer to different planning ranges and scales, put the wages on different values and issues.

Thank you for this comment, with which we agree. The comparison between the definitions of Urban Heritage, Resilience and Sustainability is presented here to show the underlying systems approach that we are using as a basis for the paper. It should be clear that the three entities are covering different situations, deal with different institutions and refer to different planning ranges and scales, put the wages on different values and issues.

• Operationalization measurements should consider the extraction of a particular set of hazards for particular areas, places. The “all-hazards approach” is simply not possible for realization and not needed.

We have added the need to prioritize risks according to local contexts in section 3.3 (Lines 412-419). However, we would like to gently express our differing perspective on the notion that the “all-hazard approach is not possible for realization and not needed.” We believe that this approach does not imply conducting analyses and implementing measures for all possible hazards, but rather suggests not discarding any hazards without a sensible reason. Additionally, certain measures, especially no-regret measures on societal resilience, are hazard-agnostic and should therefore be considered under an all-hazard approach.

• It should be mentioned, that the resilience manuals on the operational level should be simplified and taking into account the stress situations in which they are likely to be applied. The black-out situation and impossibility to reach the data systems, should be considered accordingly.

We have addressed the first part of the comment with a sentence in section 3.3 (Lines 416-419). The second half of the comment, while true, cannot be addressed by the technological solutions of SHELTER and ARCH and depend on the specific local implementation of these tools.

• There are some technical remarks, concerning the text of the article, to be improved.

The errors have been corrected, the last column of table 3 was made wider, and we included the missing information on the SHELTER tools and methods.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for your responses to my concerns.

Only one small suggestion. I think you may misunderstand my comments The first three sections of “Materials and Methods” should be a review, not a method.  I mean the first three sections seem like a literature review. You may consider moving these sections to 1. introduction. It is only a small suggestion for your reference.

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for the clarification!

After careful consideration - also taking the feedback of the other reviewers into account - we would still keep sections 3.1-3.3 under method, as the descriptions of the SHELTER and ARCH definitions and approaches serve as examples and as the basis to clarify needs for and approaches to operationalize resilience and are an important part of the method section.