“Historically, these places do a lot of social services. They are involved in many different types of activities in their communities which have a significant social and economic impact, ”said Guillaume Dupont, Full Professor at the Conservation Society of San Antonio and Director of the Center for Cultural Sustainability at UTSA. “We saw them as a necessity in communities that prepare for and then recover from hurricanes. And we also saw them as sacred places with a potential opportunity to help educate people and help entire communities prepare to withstand the multiple effects of a hurricane. “

A team of architects, engineers and curators from UTSA, University of Eastern Michigan, Wentworth Institute of Technology and Istanbul Technical University, as well as partners non-profit organization for sacred places, collaborated on the project. The action plan includes creating an assessment called a resilience performance indicator or RPI. This is a digital scoring system specially designed to help the custodians of these historic properties fortify their structures against hurricane damage.

“They can use the RPI as a guide, to know what to do, to understand the vulnerabilities in their property and what to fix,” Dupont said. “We chose this target audience, faith-based organizations, because of the role they already play in communities. RPI can also be useful in demonstrating the need to write grant applications and fundraise to make necessary repairs.

The UTSA team developed the RPI after a six-month data collection process that involved field visits to each of the nine sites. Using their collective expertise, they carefully examined each building and noted any issues such as cracks or leaky roofs. The team used a thermal imager to measure the heat of the walls and collected and analyzed soil samples. A finite element analysis was performed using software to assess the performance of each building in the event of high winds and / or heavy flooding.

A final step was to establish what the research team calls Knowledge Cafés, a series of focus groups to help uncover the many ways places of worship contribute to disaster relief and recovery efforts. These buildings and their congregations provide emergency shelter, distribute food and supplies, house medical services, and lead teams of volunteers to clean up and remove storm damage.

“It is not hyperbolic to say that the Texas Gulf Coast, or any area affected by natural disaster, cannot recover without the religious community and its buildings,” said Sarah jones, associate director of community engagement for Partners for Sacred Places.

The vital but often overlooked role sacred places play in disaster recovery efforts makes preserving these buildings a key strategy for resilience and emergency management.

“For disaster recovery, the federal government often deals with large-scale programs and it is very difficult for them to tackle at the individual building level. Our research looks at the bottom line, asking how do individuals in the fine grain of their communities suffer, survive, and recover from disaster? Dupont added. “What resources do they rely on? How can we improve these resources? How can we provide direct support where it is really going to have an impact? What is surprising is that no one pays enough attention at the local level to this type of impact.

The Resilience Roadmap project offers a unique research experience for UTSA graduate students interested in historic preservation. Kelsey Brown is a graduate assistant on the project. She is preparing her master’s degree in architecture, as well as a certificate in historic preservation. Brown collected data as part of site assessments and was involved in other areas of research. She gained invaluable field knowledge of the structural vulnerabilities that historic buildings face on the Texas Gulf Coast.

“It’s really gratifying to have the opportunity to help because these places are so important to their communities in so many ways,” said Brown. “It’s gratifying to help these sacred places have a well-documented plan to protect themselves and recover quickly in the event of a disaster. My appreciation for historic preservation grew through my involvement in the Roadmap for Resilience. “