Developing an Adaptive Framework for Assessing Climate-Related Resilience in Cultural Heritage Buildings

Cultural heritage buildings are increasingly exposed to climate-related hazards, yet conventional conservation approaches often give insufficient consideration to climate resilience and adaptive capacity. This study proposes a Heritage Climate Resilience Index (HCRI) for assessing the resilience of cultural heritage buildings under changing climatic conditions. The framework integrates climate hazard exposure, heritage-specific building characteristics, and a dynamic weighting scheme that reflects local hazard conditions. It is applied to two case studies in Bac Giang, Vietnam, and Riga, Latvia, representing distinct climatic and heritage contexts. The assessment demonstrates the framework’s ability to distinguish differences in resilience performance and to identify vulnerable building domains requiring targeted intervention. The results provide a basis for prioritizing adaptation and conservation measures according to site-specific conditions. By combining local climate information with heritage-sensitive assessment criteria, the HCRI provides a practical, transferable tool for climate-informed heritage management. The proposed framework can support stakeholders in prioritizing interventions, allocating resources, and strengthening the long-term resilience of cultural heritage buildings under increasingly frequent and severe climate-related risks.