The first workshop to support the World Heritage Sites of Hue, Hoi An and Thang Long in Viet Nam to develop Disaster Risk Management Plans is being held today (April 16) in Hue City, organized by the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, the International Centre for Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and UNESCO Viet Nam.
During the five-day workshop, staff from the World Heritage Sites and responsible agencies will be discussing the need to develop appropriate disaster risk management plans, as well as methods and tools that can be used to prepare, respond and recover in the unlikely event of a disaster.
Participants will use the World Heritage Manual on Disaster Risk Management, adopted in 2007 by UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and ICCROM, to examine the different steps of the planning process and will draft a framework for developing a disaster risk management plan.
Over the course of six months following the first workshop in Hue, staff of the three World Heritage sites will work on a draft Disaster Risk Management Plan for their site in a participatory process, involving relevant agencies. Technical assistance from the Department of Cultural Heritage, ICCROM and UNESCO will be provided.
The three draft Disaster Risk Management Plans will be reviewed, improved and finalized in a workshop scheduled to take place at the end of the year in the Thang Long Imperial Citadel World Heritage Site.
The Vietnamese version of the World Heritage Manual on Disaster Risk Management will be adjusted to Viet Nam’s context and lessons learned from this process will be shared with Viet Nam’s World Heritage sites.