About
Heritage is increasingly exposed to multiple risks, including climate-related hazards, conflict, neglect, rapid urban change, social disruption, environmental degradation, and disaster events. These risks affect not only historic buildings and monuments, but also cultural landscapes, natural heritage areas, archaeological sites, museums, collections, archives, sacred places, and community spaces that hold memory, identity, and meaning.The Heritage Emergency and Resilience Lab (HER Lab) is a collaborative research, training, documentation, and community-engagement platform focused on protecting heritage places and landscapes before, during, and after emergencies.
The Lab brings together researchers, students, heritage professionals, emergency managers, public agencies, local communities, and technology specialists to develop practical tools for heritage preparedness, rapid assessment, emergency response, recovery, and long-term resilience.
Building on digital documentation, GIS, drone mapping, AI-assisted assessment, virtual reality, field surveys, storytelling, and community-based knowledge, the Lab supports both immediate action and long-term planning for vulnerable heritage places.
Mission
By combining rigorous risk analysis with citizen science, the Heritage Emergency and Resilience Lab aims to protect global heritage through the power of collective intelligence. Their shared mission is to strengthen the preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and resilience of vulnerable cultural and natural landmarks through applied research, digital technologies, multi-risk planning, and community participation. By turning data into adaptive strategies and transforming everyday citizens and residents into active stewards, they ensure that the world’s most threatened heritage places and landscapes are preserved for generations to come.
Core Objectives
The Heritage Emergency and Resilience Lab aims to:
- Produce practical outputs such as maps, reports, training modules, field guides, dashboards, story maps, and public education materials..
- Develop systematic approaches for documenting heritage assets before emergencies occur.
- Create multi-risk assessment methods for built, cultural, natural, and landscape heritage.
- Use GIS, drone mapping, remote sensing, and spatial analysis to identify exposure, vulnerability, access routes, safe zones, and priority areas.
- Apply AI-assisted tools for condition assessment, damage detection, monitoring, reporting, and decision support.
- Develop virtual reality and simulation tools for training, public education, emergency scenarios, and recovery planning.
- Support heritage-specific emergency plans for municipalities, institutions, museums, archives, historic sites, and community organizations.
- Engage local communities in heritage documentation, field observation, oral history, risk awareness, and preparedness activities.
Why Heritage Response Matters?
Heritage places are not only physical assets. They are living records of memory, identity, landscape, community, faith, culture, and continuity.
Natural, technological, and human-made hazards such as flooding, wildfires, storms, and extreme weather events, heat and freeze-thaw cycles, industrial accidents, conflict and war, drought, tourism pressure, and rapid development can damage or destroy heritage.
A Heritage Emergency and Resilience approach helps communities and institutions to prepare for and respond rapidly to heritage in danger. It creates systems to identify risks, document values, train people, prioritize actions, and support recovery.
Heritage Emergency and Resilience Lab Focus Areas
- Multi-Risk Heritage Preparedness
- Digital Documentation for Heritage Risk Preparedness
- GIS, Remote Sensing, and Spatial Risk Mapping
- AI for Heritage Assessment and Damage Detection
- Virtual Reality, Simulation, and Training
- Emergency Response and Recovery for Heritage
- Community Heritage Action and Citizen Participation
Lab Structure and Task Forces
Multi-Risk Heritage Assessment Task Force
This task force identifies and evaluates the risks affecting heritage places and landscapes.
Main activities:
- Heritage hazard screening and profiling
- Heritage risk and vulnerability assessment
- Heritage exposure mapping
- Heritage-value assessment
- Heritage emergency priority ranking
- Heritage risk indicators for buildings, landscapes, collections, and communities
- Heritage risk checklists.
Digital Documentation and Field Survey Task Force
This task force documents heritage places before and after emergencies.
Main activities:
- Heritage field survey
- Heritage photography and video documentation
- Heritage 3D modelling and BIM
- Heritage drone mapping and photogrammetry
- Heritage digital archiving
- Heritage documentation of natural and cultural landscapes
- Heritage emergency documentation and damage ad
GIS, Drone Mapping, and Remote Sensing Task Force
This task force turns heritage and hazard data into maps, dashboards, and decision-support tools.
Main activities:
- Drone-based mapping and Orthophoto production
- Thermal and multispectral mapping where relevant
- WebGIS dashboards
- Public story maps
- Spatial risk layers
- Access and evacuation-route mapping
- Landscape vulnerability mapping
AI and Data Science Task Force
This task force develops AI-assisted tools for heritage monitoring, damage detection, analysis, and reporting.
Main activities:
- Image classification
- Crack, decay, and damage detection
- Change detection
- Predictive modelling
- Automated reporting
- AI-supported prioritization
- Explainable AI for heritage decision-making
Virtual Reality and Simulation Task Force
This task force creates immersive learning and planning environments.
Main activities:
- VR training for heritage emergency response
- Simulation of disaster scenarios
- Museum and archive salvage training
- Cultural landscape scenario modelling
- Public-facing educational VR
- Stakeholder planning tools
- Visualization of before-and-after conditions
Heritage Emergency Planning and Recovery Task Force
This task force focuses on practical response, coordination, and recovery.
Main activities:
- Emergency response planning
- Rapid response training
- Rapid damage assessment
- Stabilization protocols
- Recovery planning guides
- Institutional continuity plans
- Coordination with emergency managers
Community Engagement and Heritage Communication Task Force
This task force connects technical work with people, stories, memory, and public participation.
Main activities:
- Guided tours and field walks
- Public workshops
- Oral histories
- Documentary storytelling
- Youth engagement
- Community heritage maps
- Volunteer recruitment
- Public events
- - communication materials
- - social media and outreach
Community Heritage Action Program
The Community Heritage Action Program is the public participation arm of the Heritage Emergency and Resilience Lab. It invites residents, students, community groups, heritage organizations, and local volunteers to help document, observe, and protect heritage places and landscapes. Participants may contribute by:
- Joining guided field walks
- Photographing and documenting local heritage
- Rrecording community memories and oral histories
- Identifying vulnerable sites
- Helping map access routes and risk areas
- Participating in training workshops
- Supporting public education events contributing to story maps and community archives
Training and Workshop Activities
The HER Lab will offer practical training for different audiences.
General Workshops
- Introduction to Heritage Emergency Preparedness
- Multi-Risk Heritage Assessment
- Community Heritage Documentation
- Heritage and Climate Risk
- Heritage Under Conflict, Neglect, and Social Disruption
- Emergency Planning for Heritage Organizations
Technical Workshops
- Drone Mapping for Heritage Documentation
- GIS and Web Mapping for Heritage Risk
- Photogrammetry and 3D Documentation
- AI for Damage Detection
- VR for Emergency Training
- Digital Archiving for Heritage Preparedness
Field-Based Workshops
- Guided Heritage Risk Walks
- Rapid Condition Assessment Training
- Cultural Landscape Documentation
- Museum and Archive Salvage Exercises
- Community Memory Mapping
Research Projects
Current HER Lab Research Projects include.
Heritage@Risk
- Mapping World and Canadian Heritage at Risk
- Rapid Emergency Response Planning
Mount Mulanje
- Hazard Mapping
- Risk Assessment
- Emergency Preparedness Planning
Collaboration and Sponsorship Opportunities
HER Lab welcomes collaboration with:
- Municipalities
- Heritage organizations
- Emergency management agencies
- Museums and archives
- Conservation authorities
- Indigenous communities
- Universities and research centers
- Technology partners
- NGOs and citizen groups
We also welcome support in a variety of forms, with several key areas where your contribution can create meaningful and measurable impact:
Tailored sponsorship opportunities — customized to align with your organization’s priorities and social responsibility goals, ensuring that your support directly advances scientific research, community resilience, and climate adaptation initiatives.
Financial sponsorship — to sustain the lab’s core operations; fund targeted research projects.
Equipment donations — including field and monitoring tools, data collection and recording devices, computing hardware for spatial and statistical analysis, and other research infrastructure essential for field-based and participatory studies.
In-kind support — such as technical expertise in data analytics, GIS mapping, disaster risk management, policy development, community engagement, and capacity-building workshops; or maintenance and training related to field and lab equipment.
Your partnership will strengthen the HER Lab’s mission to bridge scientific research with community action and to advance knowledge on heritage emergency management.
The sponsorship application form can be found here.
Become a Member
Membership in the Heritage Emergency and Resilience Lab is voluntary and open to individuals interested in heritage protection, emergency preparedness, digital documentation, community engagement, and resilience.
Members are encouraged to join at least one task force and participate in lab activities, workshops, fieldwork, documentation, public events, or research projects.
Members may include: Students, Researchers, Heritage professionals, Emergency managers, Planners and architects, Conservation specialists, Museum and archive staff, Community members, Youth participants, Local residents, Indigenous and cultural community representatives, Technology specialists.
The HER Lab Team
Executive Team
Dr. Ali Asgary
Professor, York University, Director, CIFAL York, Executive Director, ADERSIM
Dr. Maleknaz Nayebi
Associate Professor, York University, Associate Director, CIFAL York
Dr. Koorosh Attarian
HER LAB MANAGER, ADERSIM, York University
Coordinators
Francesco del Carpio
PhD Student, Operations Coordinator, CIFAL York, York University
Mahbod Aarabi
ADERSIM Coordinator, SLCS Lab, Drone Sensing and Water Sampling Task Force Coordinator
News and Events
How to Reach Us
CIFAL York
cifaldirector@yorku.ca