The aim of this operation carried out by the Etablissement public Loire (Loire public establishment) is to offer managers and owners of cultural property located in flood zones a method for diagnosing vulnerability to flooding, which should make it possible to assess the risks on site and identify the heritage safeguarding measures to be implemented.
- 05 July 2020
Today, in the Loire basin and its tributaries, more than 1.5 million people and more than 20 000 businesses lie in flood zones. In the event of a historic flood, direct damage to housing and economic activity would amount to billions of euros. Several thousand heritage properties in the basin are, to a greater or lesser extent, vulnerable to flood risk. Damage to these properties may be irrevocable.
As a historical and cultural legacy, the heritage of the Loire basin and its tributaries is a major challenge that must be preserved. The risk of flooding in this area led the Loire public establishment to work with state services in the early 2000s to compile an inventory of exposed cultural heritage.
The European Flood Directive of 2007 supports this by setting the objective of reducing the negative consequences of floods on cultural heritage. In other words, it aims to identify vulnerable heritage and cultural issues and implement the means to reduce their vulnerability.
Identifying the floodplain heritage
The Loire public establishment’s intervention in reducing the vulnerability of cultural heritage to flooding is in line with the development or implementation of local flood risk management strategies.
Two methods have been developed and tested. The first was to identify and qualify the heritage in flood zones according to degree of risk exposure. The second proposed a simple and robust vulnerability self-diagnosis tool for owners and managers.
Thus, in 2019, nearly 1 500 places of interest (historic monuments, listed buildings and objects, archives, libraries, museums, archaeological heritage and heritage that is unprotected but of a high value to the community) have been identified and mapped over some twenty territories in the Loire basin and its particularly exposed tributaries.
A tool to diagnose risks
A dedicated website, accessible to all, allows people to consult on the issues identified in flood zones. Public or private owners and managers of cultural properties likely to be flooded can complete a self-diagnosis free of charge. It can be accessed at the following web address: http://autodiagnostic-patrimoine.eptb-loire.fr/.
The self-diagnosis tool provides, first of all, an opportunity to better understand the flooding phenomenon, its frequency and the information to be taken into account to keep informed about occurrences. Secondly, it serves to identify and analyse its consequences. Finally, it makes it possible to define the measures to be implemented (technical or organisational).
In about 30 minutes, the owner or manager can get an overview of his property’s situation.
As an example of the economic challenges that are also linked to a flood, we can refer to the impact observed in May 2016 on the Château de Chambord, which remained closed to visitors for seven days, representing a considerable loss of income. No precedent of flooding on this scale had been recorded since the time of Louis XIV (17th century).
Total investment and European funding
Total investment for the ’Reducing the vulnerability of cultural heritage assets to flooding’ project was EUR 79 766; the contribution of the European Regional Development Fund amounted to EUR 39 883 under the ’ERDF Loire Interregional Operational Programme (POI)’ for the 2014-2020 programming period. The investment falls under the ‘Energy and Climate Union’ priority.