Over the last decades, as a consequence of the effects of climate change, cultural heritage has been impacted by an increasing number of climate related hazards, posing new challenges to conservators and heritage managers. SHELTER aims at developing a data driven and community based knowledge framework that will bring together the scientific community and heritage managers with the objective of increasing resilience, reducing vulnerability and promoting better and safer reconstruction in historic areas. The first step to enhance resilience is associated to the improvement in understanding the direct and indirect impacts of climatic and environmental changes and natural hazards on historic sites and buildings, by linking concepts commonly used in disaster risk management and climate change adaptation with cultural heritage management, in order to provide inclusive and informed decision-making. Comprehensive disaster risk management plans need to be drawn up, based on the specific characteristics of cultural heritage and the nature of the hazards within a regional context, taking into account the diverse heritage typologies as well as the specific socioeconomic conditions, since this directly affect the vulnerability of such systems. By a deep understanding of the hazard, the exposure and the vulnerability of the historic area, the local dynamics and the provision of innovative governance and community based models, it is possible to provide useful methodologies, tools and strategies to enhance resilience and secure sustainable reconstruction. Due to the information complexity and the diverse data sources, SHELTER framework will be implemented in multiscale and multisource data driven platform, able to provide the necessary information for planning and adaptive governance. All the developments of the project will be validated in 5 open-labs, representative of main climatic and environmental challenges in Europe and different heritage’s typologies.

The basic idea is to embed the waste from building demolition (fragmented bricks, fragmented plaster or concrete, fragmented glasses, machined wood from windows frame or from wood beams after demolition etc.) in a geopolymer matrix to produce prefabricated panels for different use. The main objective of InnoWEE is in fact the development of an optimized reuse of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) materials producing high add value prefabricated insulating and radiating panels to be used in energy efficient buildings. The proposal is based on: 1) Recovery, selection and disassembling of CDW that will be characterized and eventually treated to yield suitable raw materials to be used for production of prefabricated components. 2) Development of new high performance prefabricated insulating geopolymeric panels for building walls envelopes and radiating panels for indoor wall and ceilings with low environmental impact, low embodied energy, low CO2 emissions, high thermal performance. Panels will be fabricated recycling cement, bricks, mortars, glass and wood reaching at least 30% of CDW. 3) To install the panels in demo sites characterized by different climate to evaluate their performance in terms of reducing energy use and minimizing environmental impacts. 4) To use an integrated design process and a holistic approach for the whole life cycle of the materials and components and produce a material that is cost effective, competitive, robust, reliable and low maintenance. 5) To create practical and sustainable building solutions that are easy to integrate into building designs, easy to install, take in consideration the needs of the stakeholders that strongly influence the market, and have been tested to meet all the current standards.