Climate adaptation planning for cultural heritages in coastal tourism destinations: A multi-objective optimization approach

Substantial climate change impacts threaten the persistence of cultural resources globally. The need exists for conceptualizing decision support tools that focus on quantifying and optimizing the managerial priorities to leverage historic preservation and adaptation actions that enhance the continuity of heritage values and sites. Informed by the Structured Decision Making (SDM) approach, this study advances the singular objective Optimal Preservation (OptiPres) Model, a decision support tool for climate adaptation planning of historic buildings by considering three tourism management objectives: (a) maximize accumulated resource value, (b) maximize cost-efficiency, and (c) minimize vulnerability. These objectives are tested under different budget scenarios using a 30-year planning horizon with a subset of buildings located in two historic districts of Cape Lookout National Seashore (CALO), United States. The multi-objective approach demonstrates the OptiPres Model is transformative, transparent, and transferable for providing cultural resource decision support and enhancing the sustainability of cultural heritage globally.