STORM Academy 2019: Interdisciplinary Training on Cultural Heritage and Climate Risk Management

updated February 2026

As part of the EU-funded STORM project (Safeguarding Cultural Heritage through Technical and Organisational Resources Management) the STORM Academy 2019 was held in Rome between January and February 2019.

The training was conducted at the National Fire Academy (I.S.A.) in Rome and Tuscia University in Viterbo by teachers selected from the project’s partners.

The three-week programme combined classroom instruction, practical exercises and the use of the STORM decision-support platform. It addressed climate science, conservation practice, emergency management and structural monitoring.

Sessions covered climate change scenarios for Europe, vulnerability and risk assessment methodologies, sensor technologies including fibre Bragg gratings and structural health monitoring, and integrated approaches to prevention, rapid damage assessment and recovery at complex sites such as the Baths of Diocletian, Ephesus and the Roman ruins of Troia.

Particular emphasis was placed on operational procedures for coordination between rescue services and cultural heritage authorities, the cost-effectiveness of mitigation options and pathways for transforming research outputs into sustainable business models and resilient management policies for cultural sites.

The STORM Academy was designed to train professional figures and students through onsite training activities and lessons. Its added value lies in the interdisciplinarity between the various fields and the cooperation between different areas of knowledge involved in the conservation and management of cultural heritage.

The training is a direct consequence of the achievements gained during three years of research project and testing in the five project pilot sites.

Training Needs for Heritage Fire Safety

Heritage sites exposed to climate‑amplified hazards require specialised fire‑safety competences that go beyond standard building fire training. The STORM Academy experience highlighted several priority training needs:

• Understanding fire behaviour in historic materials (timber, stone, composite structures) and interaction with other hazards such as extreme weather and earthquakes.
• Developing site‑specific fire risk assessments that integrate climate projections, vegetation/landscape fire threats and technical vulnerabilities of monuments and collections.
• Strengthening pre‑incident planning and joint exercises between heritage custodians, National Fire and Rescue Services and civil protection authorities, including salvage priorities and safe access routes in complex sites.
• Using innovative tools (IoT sensors, structural health monitoring, integrated platforms like STORM and interoperable databases such as the ResCult EID) to detect anomalies early and support decision‑making during incidents.
• Improving communication skills for first responders and heritage professionals to negotiate trade‑offs between life safety, containment tactics and reduction of damage to irreplaceable assets.

The Course

The lectures of the course have explored the relations between climatic change and risk for Cultural Heritage, the technologies available to predict hazardous events and limit damages and the operational procedures in case of emergency.

Part of the lessons have been based on the use of the innovative platform developed and provided within the STORM project. Lessons have dealt with the main topics of the project:

• The STORM project and protection of CH: state of the art and goals
• Principles and main practices adopted for prevention, quick assessment, recovery
• Observed and predicted climate change in Europe
• The Baths of Diocletian, a complex site: history, characteristics, conservation problems – The Storm Project at Baths of Diocletian: motivations and solutions
• Identification of gaps in CH policies and future approaches to improve regulations
• Methodology and use of knowledge coupled with the STORM platform.
• Protection of cultural buildings and sites from vegetation fires
• A toolkit for supporting CH users during the prevention and intervention process
  Exercise – Terme di Diocleziano
• Earthquake damages: shoring procedures in emergencies scenarios
• Gathering and sharing data in emergency between rescue services and cultural heritage protection bodies
• Introduction on integrated platform and its benefit – Description of sensors used in STORM
• Development of integrated structural health monitoring and earthquake risks management systems for historical structures: the STORM approach
• Protection measures on CH against environmental agents. FBG sensors, installation, data collection and data analysis
• Integrated approach to vulnerability and risk assessment for cultural heritage sites
• Collect a field oriented view of cost-effective approach and compare it with Storm project achievements
• Improving risk control decision making: Cost-effectiveness analyses of heritage conservation interventions.
• How to get further research, site sustainability and business opportunities out of a resilient policy for cultural sites.
• Climate change impact: From current practices and legislation towards an appropriate management response through monitoring and risk assessment
• Ongoing archeological studies, conservation and protection works in the Ephesus  site .
• Methodology and use of knowledge coupled with the STORM platform
  Disaster Risk Management at the Roman Ruins of Troia. The experience provided by STORM.
• Water and environment agents damages protecting procedures in emergency
• How to get further research, site sustainability and business opportunities out of a resilient policy for cultural sites.
• The impact of weather events, augmented by climate change, on cultural heritage, monitoring and management: A UK perspective
• Managing cultural heritage sites to cope with slow onset climate change problems
• Non-destructive technologies for Cultural Heritage: the STORM approach for damage assessment
• A toolkit for supporting CH users during the prevention and intervention process
• EYCH and other future EU initiative in the field of CH

Course outcomes and participant feedback

By the end of the three weeks, participants were able to apply integrated risk‑assessment methods to real heritage case studies, using the STORM platform and sensor data to design prevention and emergency‑response strategies.

Joint exercises at the Baths of Diocletian and other pilot sites helped trainees practice coordinated procedures for rapid damage assessment, shoring, and information exchange between fire brigades and heritage authorities.

Informal feedback from participants and partner institutions emphasised the value of the Academy’s interdisciplinary approach, the opportunity to work directly with technological tools developed in the project, and the relevance of the training for future EU‑level initiatives on climate‑change adaptation and cultural heritage protection.

Note (updated February 2026): The STORM project website (http://www.storm-project.eu) is currently under maintenance, and the training materials originally available online are currently unavailable. The project concluded in 2019, and the technical documentation may have been archived by consortium partners. For information on presentations, the detailed program, and STORM platform documentation, we recommend contacting the project’s main partners directly (National Fire Academy – I.S.A., University of Tuscia, CNVVF) or consulting the European CORDIS repository: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/700191.

STORM Documents

The STORM project website (www.storm-project.eu) is currently under maintenance (February 2026), and the training materials are temporarily unavailable. Official project documentation can be found on the European Commission’s CORDIS portal (Grant Agreement No. 700191).