Predicting future challenges: Creating a foresight methodology for climate change adaptation
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2015-11-06

Meredith Wiggins, Jen Heathcote
HISTORIC ENGLAND (FORMERLY ENGLISH HERITAGE)
Foresight has become an important tool for identifying potential future challenges. It involves gathering together myriad lines of evidence to characterise unknowables and address long-term, strategic issues. To that end, Historic England (formerly English Heritage) are working to develop an holistic methodology to assess possible future stresses upon the historic environment. This approach involves the spatial and quantitative analysis of data drawn from varied UK environmental, land use, infrastructure, climate projections and other sources. The combination and interrogation of these data will allow us to identify places at possible risk in the medium to long term. We have two aims. First, to improve our ability to assess the likely location and scale of future threats to the historic environment. Second, to generate robust information that allows us to begin talking about the adaptation measures required to improve protection where that is possible, and to develop alternative strategies where it is not. This paper will focus on case studies involving potential future environmental and climatic change.