NOVEL RISK ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY for CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES

Abstract

Cultural heritage sites are places subjected to certain risks embodied, for example, by theft, vandalism, damaging, terrorism which could harm equally persons and cultural heritage. For this reason, it is necessary to activate suitable countermeasures to avoid the above risks and to defend against them by means of intrusion detection, access control, video surveillance, communication systems, security personnel and procedures suitably combined to achieve an integrated system or solution. In the present work a new risk assessment method for cultural heritage sites (RACHS) is shown, illustrating as a case study, with no loss of its broad applicability, its usage with a museum. The suggested risk assessment method permits of finding the precise quantity of physical security defences (intrusion detection system, access control, video surveillance, communication devices, security personnel, etc.) which a given cultural heritage site requires and the correlated features depending on the potential targets that can be damaged. It also permits to avoid of overrating the risk as in the case of considering superfluous defensive countermeasures which occasionally can be not necessary, thus decreasing the associated additional costs.