Cyprus Regional Development Project (CRDP): towards an integrated approach into the research and management of maritime cultural heritage

The Ocean Decade brings to the fore the need to adopt an integrated approach into the research and management of maritime cultural heritage, to respond to the increasing challenges developed due to climate change and societal and economic changes. This is the aim of the Cyprus Regional Development Project (CRDP) funded and lead by the Honor Frost Foundation. The project focuses at Agia Napa coast, at the east of Cyprus. This is an area which holds testimonies of human activities dating from the pre-Neolithic period onwards. At the same time, however, contemporary development and the subsequent extensive building activity that took place off the coast of Agia Napa from the 1970s onwards, has altered the maritime cultural landscape of the region. In this context, the project aims to develop an informed and integrated model for the protection, research, management, and dissemination of Maritime Cultural Heritage. To achieve this, the project encourages the collaboration among different disciplines from Institutions from Cyprus and the UK to gather data and document maritime cultural and natural heritage of the region, as well as the contemporary threats of the maritime landscape of the region. In this framework, the project works on developing and testing in the field easily accessed tools that will embrace the interdisciplinary approach on the documentation and management of the sites. At the same time, to ensure continuity of the deployment of this model not only in Cyprus, but also in the wider eastern Mediterranean, the project focuses training and capacity building to scholars from the region, increasing their knowledge on the topics under investigation. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CMMI was established as a Center of Excellence in Marine and Maritime Research, Technology Development Innovation (RTDI) and has received funding from theEuropean Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 857586 and matching funding from the Government of the Republic ofCyprus.