Italy, France, Spain and Turkey are risk-prone countries and, at the same time, extremely rich in cultural heritage assets, some of these designated by UNESCO as World Heritage sites. Moreover, these countries have gained significant experience in the growing sector of cultural heritage protection in emergencies and can contribute to PROCULTHER with their valuable background in this field. The International Centre for the Study of Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and the Fondazione Hallgarten – Franchetti Centro Studi Villa Montesca (Italy) are the two other project partners supporting the expertise of this Consortium, which is also honoured of the participation of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe.

In order to achieve at best its expected results, PROCULTHER is pooling together the professional skills and competences from the Consortium Partners implementing the Project, as well as from UCPM Participating States and third countries aiming at :

  • Placing cultural heritage protection at the top of national civil protection agendas in European countries and making cultural heritage protection a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder issue,
  • Improving collaboration and coordination arrangements among national disaster management players to promote better organized and more effective national civil protection systems,
  • Creating tools and concrete technical support with the purpose of initiating or further developing national discussions on the development of national capacities in this field,
  • Increasing UCPM capacities and better protected cultural heritage worldwide through the availability of a UCPM led capacity in support of national response actions in case of emergency.

With an overall budget of 800.000 EUR (co-financed by 75% from DG ECHO) and throughout the project ‘s duration, i.e. January 2019 – December 2021, the PROCULTHER Team will support the project activities with its expertise in the fields of preparedness, capacity building and disaster risk management toward the implementation of the following activities (work packages):