Heritage assets are under considerable threat from climate change. Risk assessment methodologies provide an important first step in identifying the nature and extent of climate change impacts and in defining appropriate adaptation strategies. Historic England, as part of its Climate Change Strategy is seeking to address this gap by establishing a methodology for assessing the risks to heritage assets posed by climate change. To inform the development of this risk assessment methodology, Harlow Consulting was commissioned to undertake an integrative literature review of English language research related to the quantification of climate change risk to heritage assets.  

The overall aim of the project was to identify whether there are current approaches to climate change-related heritage risk assessment that are potentially appropriate for use in England.  

The project involved extensive background research into understanding the characteristics of what an effective climate change risk assessment looks like. A robust, staged search strategy was devised and used to compile a database of 500 sources covering methodological approaches to heritage-specific climate change risk assessments from all over the world. Sources were moderated through a thorough review of abstracts and 116 sources were included in the final review. Background research was then used to create an analysis framework, which was used to systematically assess the methodological robustness of each of the 116 sources.