Alliance for Response: A National Program on Cultural Heritage and Disaster Management

FAIN: PE-50079-12

Heritage Preservation (Washington, DC 20005-3403)
Lori Foley (Project Director: July 2011 to August 2014)

Three Alliance for Response forums, an educational outreach campaign focused on developing sustainable partnerships between cultural institutions and emergency management and response officials, and the development of an online Response Resource Center.

Humanities collections throughout the country are vulnerable to emergencies, from localized flooding to region-wide catastrophic events. Alliance for Response: A National Program on Cultural Heritage and Disaster Management aims to educate stewards of humanities collections on how to collaborate with cultural heritage institutions and emergency management agencies to implement networks, plans, and policies that reduce the risk of damage to collections. Relationships with emergency management agencies are key to protecting collections, but few cultural heritage institutions have formal ones and few emergency management agencies include cultural heritage in official disaster planning. Training will take place at Alliance for Response Forums, and resulting cooperative disaster networks will gain knowledge and resources through an enhanced online Resource Center. This project will support Alliance for Response through it's 10th anniversary year.