Natural Hazards vs Cultural Heritage

Natural hazards are usually approached by geosciences (geology, geography); they are a cause of planetary evolution that can be divided into geological hazards (earthquakes, volcanic eruption), meteorological hazards (hailstorm, heat wave, cyclones, ice storm, tornado), and hydrological hazards (floods, droughts, mudslides). Over the last decades, due to the technological evolution, the research undertaken in order to understand and predict natural hazards has made serious progress. When a natural hazard is affecting the cultural heritage integrity, the process can be fast and lead to permanent destruction or slow, depending on the severity of the hazard. Along history, natural hazards lead to the destruction of some famous monuments: the pyroclastic flows from Vesuvius completely destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D.; the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos Lighthouse have been destroyed by earthquakes in 227 B.C. and in the fourteenth century, respectively; mausoleum of...