Report

Assessment of damage to heritage assets. Development of a method.

Reseach area: Sustainable transport
Year: 2003
VTI-code: M937
Price: 160 kr

 
VTI Publication M937 (53 pages, 1817 kB. Swedish text with English summary)

A functioning method has been developed which facilitates the working procedure in assessing damage to heritage assets. In contrast to previous procedures, the method has tackled the very unwieldy environmental legislation and has first developed a model for its interpretation. This model has been integrated into a working procedure which is designed in such a way that those who must assess a damage will not be able to miss any vital part of the legislation and that they are obliged to motivate their standpoint, both to themselves and to others, in assessment after assessment. The method has not been developed in a way that replaces skilled analysis by standardised ready-made solutions of how damage is to be assessed in different cases.

Assessment of damage to heritage assets is often a weak element in environmental impact assessments (EIA). General method development in this respect is needed as support in performing analyses and descriptions for road projects. The task of the project Assessment of Damage to Heritage Assets is to develop a method which can assess damage to protected areas for nature, culture or outdoor activities. The types of areas which have been studied are areas of national interest and Natura 2000 areas.
The study is based on a major review of e.g. Swedish, European and supranational handbook or educational literature, investigation material from infrastructure projects, and current guidelines and laws. This review has been published in VTI meddelande 936, 2002. The aspects to be elucidated in this review were: the environmental aspects which are listed as capable of being damaged, the way damage is assessed, the way environmental pressure, change in environmental state and related impacts are described, the evaluatory principles to be used, and the legal basis for the conservation of assets deemed worthy of conservation. These aspects are to be used as building blocks in constructing a method.
The basis for the assessment of damage is the law. Current legislation is often difficult to understand and is of little help, in its existing state, to a person whose job it is to assess a damage to a heritage asset; in most cases this is the author of an EIA, a consultant or an official. Chapter 3 Section 6 of the Environmental Code incorporates in practically unaltered form the old national interest legislation from the Natural Resources Act of 1987. The official comments to the Environmental Code explain how the regulations concerning national interests shall be interpreted with regard to pronounced damage. Damage shall not cause a permanent negative impact on the asset, or damage that can have a very large temporary impact on this. At the same time, insignificant impacts are excluded. Four important concepts are thus enunciated: negative impact, permanent impact, temporary but very great impact, and insignificant impact.
The method is designed as a checklist which deals with a number of planning stages, a number of questions in each of which must be answered before proceeding to the end of the checklist where an assessment – no damage, damage or pronounced damage – has to be made. The method has four stages or parts.
In the first part, the user chooses the heritage assets that are relevant to the specific project. The heritage assets to be considered are dictated by legislation and to some extent by the investigation.
The second part clarifies the causative relationships between the of the project in question in such a way that those aspects of the environmental pressure which result in effects in the form of certain changes in the condition of different environmental state must be elucidated. Both the pressures and the effects must be clearly described.
The third part notes the impact that these changes in environmental states can, in turn, give rise to for the specified heritage assets. This part is based on the consequence concerned and structures the assessment of how the consequence is to be classified. There will be no classification in terms such as good–bad, 1–3, large–small, high–low etc. which are so common in nature conservancy, cultural heritage preservation and EIA contexts. The legislation does not clearly set up such a classification system and does not, therefore, make it easy to decide how damage, in different forms, is to be judged. Classification is carried out with reference to four questions.

1. Is the impact negative?
2. Is the impact permanent?
3. Is the impact temporary but very serious?
4. Is the impact insignificant?

The fourth part comprises subjective value judgments (in the same way as in today's EIA) to a greater extent than the previous parts. This is done because we consider that it is not possible to disregard subjectivity, since the situation is very different in different projects in different parts of the country, and at the same time the level of expertise is also different. Part four is based on answers in part three and compiles these for an assessment of the consequence for the heritage asset as a whole. The entire heritage asset is also to be assessed with reference to a national and a supranational perspective. In this part the questions to be answered are the same as those in part three, but now they are formulated with reference to the overall effect.
The method has been tested on a recently produced EIA for European Route E6 through Bohuslän. According to an external assessment, the method works well.

Author(s)
Antonson, Hans

Blomqvist, Göran

Gustafsson, Mats

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