Alliance for Response 2015-2016: A National Program on Cultural Heritage and Disaster Management

FAIN: PE-50132-15

FAIC (Washington, DC 20005-1704)
Lori Foley (Project Director: May 2014 to August 2015)
Jessica Unger (Project Director: August 2015 to June 2017)

Two county-based forums and six webinars for cultural heritage managers and emergency response personnel as part of the Alliance for Response (AFR) program to help new and existing network members develop, manage, and maintain cooperative disaster networks.  Each forum would reach an audience of 125 participants, while the webinars would reach the 23 current AFR networks.  Once archived on the AFR Web site, the webinars would be available free of charge to the public.  The program would also expand its current outreach to link major emergency management and first response associations with the cultural heritage community.

Humanities collections throughout the country are vulnerable to emergencies, from localized flooding to region-wide catastrophic events. Alliance for Response educates stewards of humanities collections on how cultural heritage institutions and emergency management agencies can collaborate 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 connections and few emergency management agencies include cultural heritage in official disaster planning. In this next phase of Alliance for Response, Heritage Preservation will pilot two county-based forums; present six webinars to help new and existing network members organize, manage, and maintain robust cooperative disaster networks; and expand its ongoing cultural heritage educational outreach campaign to major emergency management and first response associations.