Improving sustainable cultural heritage restoration work through life cycle assessment based model

Sustainable restoration process is one of the biggest challenges for public and private decision makers in the Cultural Heritage sector. Currently, sustainability assessment methods are well established tools to quantitatively determine their environmental (LCA), economic (LCC) and social (SLCA) impacts from products/service across the entire value chain. Nevertheless, while these life cycle methods are widely applied in many industries and service sectors, they still are at its infancy in the restoration work of Cultural Heritage. The main goal of this paper is to define and build a general framework including all impact indicators related to the restoration work processes to apply experimentally, and for the first time, all the sustainability assessment dimensions together within the Cultural Heritage sector. The ISO 14040 standard under guidelines published by the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative has been used as an assessment tool. Then, a CH-LCM Model framework based on a previous work from the author is applied to the real case concerning the restoration of the fortress of Uncastillo (Spain). The data collected from the real case concerning the restoration of the fortress of Uncastillo (Spain) have allowed us to reach two objectives: firstly, to validate the model empirically and, secondly, to identify successful managerial practices for the decision makers. In this respect, the paper shows that the life cycle approach can be considered an effective method for improving innovative managerial practices towards the sustainability, preservation and restoration of Cultural Heritage by assessing the environmental impact, the financial and economic feasibility and the implementation of an engagement strategy for the stakeholders. Finally, we have pointed out a set of valuable recommendations for future actions.