See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/295245529

Risk assessment of cultural heritage sites clusters using satellite imagery and
GIS: the case study of Paphos District, Cyprus

Article in Natural Hazards · February 2016

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-016-2211-6

CITATIONS READS

20 545

4 authors, including:

Athos Agapiou Kyriacos Themistocleous

Cyprus University of Technology Cyprus University of Technology
202 PUBLICATIONS 1,581 CITATIONS 251 PUBLICATIONS 1,034 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Diofantos G. Hadjimitsis
Cyprus University of Technology
406 PUBLICATIONS 2,967 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Cyprus Continuously Operating Natural Hazards Monitoring and Prevention System (CyCLOPS) View project

(JPI-CH) CLIMA - Cultural Landscape risk Identification Management and Assessment View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Kyriacos Themistocleous on 31 October 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Risk assessment of cultural heritage sites
clusters using satellite imagery and GIS: the
case study of Paphos District, Cyprus

A. Agapiou, V. Lysandrou,
K. Themistocleous & D. G. Hadjimitsis

Natural Hazards
Journal of the International Society
for the Prevention and Mitigation of
Natural Hazards

ISSN 0921-030X

Nat Hazards
DOI 10.1007/s11069-016-2211-6

1 23
Your article is protected by copyright and all
rights are held exclusively by Springer Science
+Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint
is for personal use only and shall not be self-
archived in electronic repositories. If you wish
to self-archive your article, please use the
accepted manuscript version for posting on
your own website. You may further deposit
the accepted manuscript version in any
repository, provided it is only made publicly
available 12 months after official publication
or later and provided acknowledgement is
given to the original source of publication
and a link is inserted to the published article
on Springer's website. The link must be
accompanied by the following text: "The final
publication is available at link.springer.com”.

1 23
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards
DOI 10.1007/s11069-016-2211-6

ORIGINAL PAPER

Risk assessment of cultural heritage sites clusters using

satellite imagery and GIS: the case study of Paphos
District, Cyprus

A. Agapiou1 • V. Lysandrou1 • K. Themistocleous1 •

D. G. Hadjimitsis1

Received: 9 October 2015 / Accepted: 30 January 2016

Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract This paper aims to assess the risk of natural and anthropogenic hazards for
cultural heritage in Cyprus by integrating multi-temporal GIS and earth observation
analysis, in the area of Paphos District. The work presented here attends to re-evaluate
previous results from earth observations and GIS analysis and go a step forward targeting
more reliable outcomes for cultural heritage management. The scope of the paper was to
develop a more accurate methodology for risk assessment against natural and anthro-
pogenic hazards (e.g., soil erosion; urban expansion), based on homogeneous clustering of
the monuments under consideration. The accomplished assessment approach, being lop-
sided and generic, cannot be applied across the board and undistractedly for cultural
heritage management of all types of monuments of the district. Instead, the proposed
clustering of monuments based on a variety of parameters is taking into consideration
characteristics of their immediate environment, resulting rational local-based outcomes
more useful for monuments and sites safeguarding and for prevention measurements. For
each one of the five clusters of monuments located in the Paphos District, an analytical
hierarchy process (AHP) method was followed in order to address the individual and
unique characteristics of the monuments and sites within the same cluster area. Subse-
quently, the weight factors from these clusters were interpolated to the whole district, prior
to the application of the overall AHP risk assessment. Ultimately, the results were com-
pared with the overall AHP method applied for the entire Paphos District, indicating that

& A. Agapiou
athos.agapiou@cut.ac.cy
V. Lysandrou
vasiliki.lysandrou@cut.ac.cy
K. Themistocleous
k.themistcleous@cut.ac.cy
D. G. Hadjimitsis
d.hadjimitsis@cut.ac.cy
1
Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics, Remote, Sensing and Geo-Environment Research
Lab, Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

the proposed methodology can be more accurate and realistic for the different groups of the
monuments.

Keywords Cultural heritage  Cyprus  Natural hazards  GIS  Remote sensing 

Management  Preservation  AHP methodology

1 Introduction

Cultural heritage, encompassing the archaeological and historical built environment, is at

risk of natural disasters, especially in low-income countries. Fires, earthquakes, flooding as
well as urban expansion are among the major causes of loss and damage (Taboroff 2000).
Cultural heritage nowadays is facing events of catastrophic impact often causing irre-
versible destruction. These unfavorable events may have long-term effects provoked from
environmental factors of the exposed archaeological heritage, accelerating the natural
decay of time, while in other cases the destruction is instantaneous and fatal. In addition to
natural hazards, inadequate emergency interventions in the case of a risk accident may
cause further damage. Not to be overlooked is the fact that cultural heritage destruction has
domino effect on social and economic levels of a country. The wide range of the problem is
further aggravated appraising the global climate changes causing increased and stronger
extreme phenomena. Therefore, the idea of preventive conservation seems once again to be
a primary focus of cultural preservation worldwide. Risk maps have become an efficient
tool for prediction of cultural heritage vulnerabilities, mainly because of irreversible cul-
tural characteristics that can never be duplicated after being destroyed (Wang 2015;
Drdácký 2007). Indeed as Karaca (2015) argues, identifying risks for cultural heritage
protection program to minimize and control the probability and impact of threats to the
collection is considered an important component of risk management.
For the aforementioned reasons, risk preparedness alongside prevention should be seen
as the best recipe for cultural heritage preservation. Traditionally, decisions are made just
by allocating resources case by case and by adopting policies based on simplifications of
reality. This approach highlights the need of using an evaluative framework starting from
the early stages of the decision-making processes. In the above perspective, the paper
explores the use of multi-criteria spatial decision support systems in order to define
enhancement strategies for cultural built heritage (Oppio et al. 2015).
In this direction, the exploitation of remote sensing datasets seems ideal for having a
reliable system for systematic monitoring of built cultural heritage sites—being isolated
monuments or entire archaeological sites—exposed to open-air environmental conditions
(Agapiou et al. 2013; Hadjimitsis et al. 2011; Tarchi et al. 2000). Analytical hierarchy
process (AHP) method has been widely applied for management and risk assessment of
cultural heritage sites providing an overall risk assessment in an area under examination
(Karaca 2015; Hadjimitsis et al. 2011). As Negula et al. (2015) mentioned, UNESCO has
identified 14 primary factors/threats affecting the World Heritage properties, including
urban sprawl, local conditions affecting physical fabric, climate change and severe weather
events, sudden ecological or geological events, management and institutional factors,
transportation (http://whc.unesco.org/en/factors/). In the context, the accurate monitoring
of the state of conservation provides essential and timely information for the implemen-
tation of counteracting measures before irreversible damage might occur. Given the very

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

large extent of some properties, especially in the case of the world natural heritage sites or
the level of detail needed for the assessment of the cultural sites, satellite-based earth
observation (EO) enables the responsible authorities to protect, monitor, document, present
and share the World Heritage Sites (Negula et al. 2015) as well as of course other
important and less important archaeological sites and monuments.
AHP is an intuitively easy approach widely applied to help decision-makers who face
several conflicting criteria and alternatives simultaneously. AHP has been proposed by
Saaty in 1970s (Saaty 1977). It is a multi-criteria decision-making method based on
comparing concepts (alternatives) in pairs. Since then, it has been applied successfully in
several different fields, such as education, social, political, manufacturing and engineering,
for different purposes: planning, selection of most important factors and best alternatives,
allocation of resources, optimization and conflict resolution (Sara et al. 2015). However, as
Fan et al. (2015) and Lin and Kou (2015) argue, there are still some deficiencies and
limitations when applying this methodology. First, the comparative judgments are sub-
jective because they rely heavily on expert opinion, which may sometimes cause incon-
sistency. Furthermore, AHP lacks the ability to adequately cope with any inherent
uncertainty and imprecision in the data. Finally, in a real situation, an expert may have
limited knowledge of and experience with alternatives; the preferred information may
contain fuzziness and incompleteness, and AHP is unable to handle this incomplete
information.
The aim of this paper is to propose a modification of the AHP methodology applied for
cultural heritage sites and monuments by grouping together sites with similar character-
istics facing similar threats. Clustering of monuments will lead to homogenous subgroups
of sites, followed by AHP method for estimating hazards. The example given in this paper
is the case study of Paphos District, Cyprus, where the risks have been identified solely
from remote sensing data (see Agapiou et al. 2015a, b).

2 Methodology and case study area

The current study concerns Paphos District in western Cyprus, an area abound in antiq-
uities. More than 150 declared Ancient Monuments of First (Ancient Monuments on State
Land) and Second Schedule (Ancient Monuments on Private Land) protected by the
Antiquities Law have been mapped with high accuracy (Fig. 1). Previous studies in this
area have been conducted by the authors in order to create a common geo-database of all
monuments, as well as to estimate hazards and produce risk maps from remote sensing data
(Agapiou et al. 2013).
Both natural and anthropogenic hazards have been mapped using solely remote sensing
data. Based on a variety of remote sensing data including low-, medium- and high-reso-
lution images (e.g., MODIS; Landsat; QuickBird) along with ready satellite products (e.g.,
ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model, ASTER GDEM) each hazard examined in this
paper has been analyzed, while the overall risk was estimated based on the AHP
methodology. A series of risk maps was created, relative to anthropogenic (urban sprawl,
modern road network, fires) and environmental (erosion, salinity, neotectonic activity)
hazards affecting cultural heritage (CH) sites in Paphos District. The resulting risk maps
for each hazard are illustrated in Fig. 2 (for further information, see Agapiou et al. 2015a, b).
In addition, another variable used for clustering monuments and sites into groups was their
elevation.

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 1 Protected monuments and sites in Paphos District, Cyprus

Prior to the AHP methodology, clustering of monuments in the Paphos District was
accomplished. In total, five classes (i.e., groups of monuments) have been identified as the
optimal number of groups for this area (see Sect. 3). For each one of these classes, the AHP
method has been applied. Therefore, for each class and for each factor (risk) a different
weight has been given. Then based on the overall results from all classes, six maps
indicating the distribution of the weight for each factor (risk) have been produced in a GIS
environment. These maps were then multiplied by the risk factor, in a similar procedure as
this is applied in AHP methodology. The overall methodology of the paper is given in
Fig. 3.
From a statistical analysis carried out based on Paphos’ Ancient Monuments average
nearest neighbor distance, it was found that they do not follow a random pattern, but are
formed into clusters. Given the z-score of -6.36, there is less than 1 % probability that this
clustered pattern could be the result of random chance (Fig. 4). This is not atypical for
archaeology since normally several sites are found clustered based on occasion’s variables,
such as the topography of a site. Therefore, it is evident that the protected monuments
under consideration are to be found in clusters within a small distance between each other.
Hence, a clustering of monuments and sites was performed using spatial constraints in
order to group together nearby monuments with similar characteristics. This observation
allows us to apply clustering methodology conducive to group monuments facing similar
threats.

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 2 Map indicating the different anthropogenic and natural hazards over Paphos District. a Archaeo-
logical sites of the Paphos District, b erosion map: areas where the soil loss is greater than the mean soil loss
value of the whole district are indicated with red color, c salinity map: areas close to the sea are indicated
with red, d tectonic activity: high and very high hazard areas are indicated with red, while very low hazard
is indicated with blue color, e urban expansion is indicated with red color, f road network proximity (250 m)
is indicated with red color which is linked with potential future urban expansion, and g fires map observed
during the period 2010–2013 is indicated with red color (revised map from Agapiou et al. 2015a, b)

Risk maps Proposed AHP methodology

Weight factor for AHP Clustering of

all area for each monuments
risk

Overall risk AHP for each

map cluster
comparison

Traditional AHP methodology Overall risk Interpolation of

weight factors
map

Fig. 3 Methodology applied in this study

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 4 Average nearest neighbor summary of the protected monuments of Paphos District

3 Results

3.1 Clustering of monuments

Clustering of monuments was performed in the ArcGIS software. Clustering technique

performs a classification procedure that tries to find natural clusters in the data. Given the
number of groups to create, the algorithm seeks for a solution where all the features (i.e.,
sites) within each group are as similar as possible, and all the groups themselves are as
different as possible. Feature similarity is based on the set of attributes that have been
specified based on the risk values and elevation. In addition, the algorithm can incorporate
spatial properties by employing a connectivity graph (minimum spanning tree) to find
natural groupings. In the begging an R2 value is computed for each variable. The R2 value
reflects how much of the variation in the original test scores data was retained after the
grouping process, so the larger the R2 value is for a particular variable, the better that
variable is at discriminating among the selected features.
An example of clustering of the monuments based on their elevation and soil erosion is
demonstrated in Figs. 5 and 6. Similar maps have been also constructed for the rest of the

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 5 Clustering of monuments based on their elevation characteristics. Five groups are formed: 0–55.53,
55.53–169.97, 169.97–349.74, 349.74–539.98 and 539.98–879.98 m

factors discussed in this paper. As it is indicated, each monument has different values of
threat or elevation. Therefore, clustering analysis seeks, in the finest way (R2), to group
together into five main classes all the declared monuments of Paphos District taking into
consideration all relative information afore described.
Figure 7 indicates the final results after the overall clustering methodology was applied
for each group separately. Five main classes have been identified for all monuments and
sites of Paphos District: classes 1–5. As it is demonstrated in Fig. 7, the classes have no
similar total number of monuments, while two of them (classes 1 and 2) have only one
monument registered under their class. On the contrary, other classes, such as classes 4 and
5, seem to group together many monuments (39 and 97 monuments, respectively). It
should be mentioned that the number of the class reflects only the sequence numbering.
This number of group for the monuments in the Paphos District has been selected after an
evaluation of different numbers of classes. Grouping effectiveness is measured using the
Calinski–Harabasz pseudo-F-statistic, which is a ratio reflecting within-group similarity
and between-group difference:
 2 
R
nc 1
 
1R2
nnc

where

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 6 Clustering of monuments based on the soil erosion results

SST  SSE
R2 ¼
SST
nc X
X nv 
ni X 2
SST ¼ vkij  vk
i¼1 j¼1 k¼1

nc X
X nv 
ni X 2
SSE ¼ vkij  vki
i¼1 j¼1 k¼1

n the number of features

ni the number of features in group i
nc the number of classes (groups)
nv the number of variables used to group features
vkij the value of the kth variable of the jth feature in the ith group
vk the mean value of the kth variable

vki the mean value of the kth variable in group i.

A description of each class is given in Table 1 and in Fig. 8. Figure 8 presents the
parallel box for each class (class 1 with blue dots; class 2 with red dots; class 3 with green
dots; class 4 with yellow dots; and class 5 with purple dots). The parallel box plot graph
summarizes both the groups and the variables (i.e., risks) within them.

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 7 Clustering of monuments based on their overall attributed characteristics (vicinity to urban areas,
vicinity to rivers, elevation, soil erosion, fires, etc.) and specific spatial constrains

Table 1 Description of each class after the clustering in the GIS environment
Class Description

1 Monuments/sites located in low elevations, far from the coastline, within active tectonic regions;
close to main road network and urban areas. Limited threats from soil erosion, but within areas
with high possibility of fires
2 Monuments/sites located on hilly areas, far from the coastline, within active tectonic regions; away
from main road network and urban areas. Limited threats from soil erosion, but within areas with
high possibility of fires
3 Monuments/sites located in very high elevations, far from the coastline, away from active tectonic
regions; close to main road network and urban areas. Threats from soil erosion and limited threats
from fires
4 Monuments/sites located nearby the coastline, in low altitude and in the vicinity of urban areas and
main road network. Limited threats from soil erosion and limited threats from fires. Within active
tectonic regions
5 Monuments/sites located in medium elevations, far from the coastline, within active tectonic
regions; close to main road network and urban areas. Threats from soil erosion and limited threats
from fires

3.2 AHP methodology for clusters

According to AHP methodology, a pair-wise comparison of the contribution of each factor

was established. Specifically, answers of several experts were collected on the reciprocal

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 8 Parallel box indicating the characteristics of each class: class 1 with blue dots, class 2 with red dots,
class 3 with green dots, class 4 with yellow dots and class 5 with purple dots

matrix, and the appropriate eigenvector solution method is then employed to calculate the
factor weightings (Table 2). As demonstrated in Table 2, different weight factors have
been estimated for each class based on their characteristics (see Table 1). The highest
weight for each class is highlighted in the table. It is obvious that the weights might vary a
lot for each hazard since this might be or not of high importance for each of the five
classes. For instance, the highest weight for class 1 is linked to urban areas, while for the
rest of the classes the highest weight values are tectonic (classes 2 and 5), fires (class 3) and
again urban areas (class 4). This difference in weights that is recorded for the same hazards
in the different classes is normal, since each group of monuments (class) faces in dissimilar
proportion the different hazards depending on the location of the site. For instance, the
distance from the sea—salinity—for class 1, is not so important factor as it is for class 4,
where all monuments are located nearby the coastline.
Based on the overall weights of Table 2, the following different equations for overall
risk hazard for each class can be defined:

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Table 2 AHP factors for classes 1–5 (see Table 1)

Factors F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 Total Normalized
sum weights

AHP weight factors for class 1

1 Tectonic 1 1/9 5 3 9 3 21.11 0.2500
2 Salinity 1/9 1 1/7 1/9 1/3 1/9 1.800 0.0213
3 Road 1/3 7 1 1/3 3 1/3 11.00 0.1302
network
4 Urban areas 1/5 9 3 1 7 3 23.20 0.2747
5 Soil erosion 1/9 3 1/3 1/7 1 1/9 4.690 0.0555
6 Fires 1/3 9 3 1/3 9 1 22.66 0.2683
84.46 1
AHP weight factors for class 2
1 Tectonic 1 9 9 9 7 5 40.00 0.3928
2 Salinity 1/9 1 1/5 1/5 1/7 1/9 1.77 0.0174
3 Road 1/9 5 1 1/3 1/3 1/7 6.92 0.0679
network
4 Urban areas 1/9 5 3 1 3 1/5 12.31 0.1209
5 Soil erosion 1/7 7 3 1/3 1 1/7 11.62 0.1142
6 Fires 1/5 9 7 5 7 1 29.20 0.2868
101.82 1
AHP weight factors for class 3
1 Tectonic 1 5 1/3 1/3 1/3 1/3 7.33 0.0906
2 Salinity 1/5 1 1/9 1/9 1/7 1/9 1.67 0.0207
3 Road 3 9 1 1/3 3 1/3 16.67 0.2061
network
4 Urban areas 3 9 3 1 3 1/3 19.33 0.2390
5 Soil erosion 3 7 1/3 1/3 1 1/5 11.87 0.1468
6 Fires 3 9 3 3 5 1 24.00 0.2968
80.87 1
AHP weight factors for class 4
1 Tectonic 1 1/3 1/3 1/5 7 3 11.87 0.1436
2 Salinity 3 1 1/5 1/7 3 3 10.34 0.1251
3 Road 3 5 1 1/3 5 5 19.33 0.2339
network
4 Urban areas 5 7 3 1 9 9 34.00 0.4114
5 Soil erosion 1/7 1/3 1/5 1/9 1 1/3 2.12 0.0257
6 Fires 1/3 1/3 1/5 1/9 3 1 4.98 0.0603
82.64 1
AHP weight factors for class 5
1 Tectonic 1 9 7 3 3 9 32.00 0.3289
2 Salinity 1/9 1 1/7 1/9 1/5 1/5 1.76 0.0181
3 Road 1/7 7 1 1/3 3 3 14.47 0.1487
network
4 Urban areas 1/3 9 3 1 5 5 23.33 0.2398
5 Soil erosion 1/3 5 1/3 1/5 1 3 9.86 0.1014
6 Fires 9 5 1/3 1/5 1/3 1 15.86 0.1630
97.28 1

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Risk Hazard for Class 1 ¼ 0:2500  F1 þ 0:0213  F2 þ 0:1302  F3 þ 0:2747  F4

þ 0:0555  F5 þ 0:2683  F6
Risk Hazard for Class 2 ¼ 0:3928  F1 þ 0:0174  F2 þ 0:0679  F3 þ 0:1209  F4
þ 0:1142  F5 þ 0:2868  F6
Risk Hazard for Class 3 ¼ 0:0906  F1 þ 0:0207  F2 þ 0:2061  F3 þ 0:2390  F4
þ 0:1468  F5 þ 0:2968  F6
Risk Hazard for Class 4 ¼ 0:1436  F1 þ 0:1251  F2 þ 0:2339  F3 þ 0:4114  F4
þ 0:0257  F5 þ 0:0603  F6
Risk Hazard for Class 5 ¼ 0:3289  F1 þ 0:0181  F2 þ 0:1487  F3 þ 0:2398  F4
þ 0:1014  F5 þ 0:1630  F6

where F1–F6 are the different factors studied in this paper (tectonic; salinity; road net-
work; urban areas; soil erosion; and fires, respectively). Based on the results of Table 2, the
normalized weights for each risk have been added in the attribute table of the monuments
in the GIS environment. Then interpolation was carried out in a GIS environment based on
the inverse distance weight (IDW) algorithm. The results from the interpolation of the
weight factors are presented in Fig. 9. It should be noticed that in comparison with tra-
ditional AHP methodology, a single value would be allocated for all monuments in the
Paphos District.
Then the overall risk hazard map was produced by multiplying the weight factor
(Fig. 9) and the hazard (Fig. 2), as demonstrated below:
Overall Risk Hazard ¼ Weight 1  F1 þ Weight 2  F2 þ Weight 3  F3 þ Weight 4
 F4 þ Weight 5  F5 þ Weight 6  F6

The final overall risk hazard map is demonstrated in Fig. 10, while Fig. 11 presents the
results from the traditional AHP methodology (from Agapiou et al. 2015a, b). The overall
risk hazard was classified into five main categories using the natural breaks values. These
categories are as follows: very low hazard; low hazard; medium hazard; high hazard; and
very high hazard. As shown in Fig. 10, the very high hazard areas are found in the
surroundings of Paphos town. Monuments and sites of class 4 seem to be the most
threatened monuments in the area of Paphos District, while other monuments of class 5 are
also endangered.
Although similar results might be seen between the traditional and the proposed AHP
methodology (Figs. 10, 11), some differences are also recorded, especially in the rural
areas of Paphos District. The proposed AHP methodology based on clustering of the
monuments was able to provide more realistic results, since the weight factors are not
uniformly distributed within Paphos District as a single value (i.e., traditional AHP), but
rather they changed depending on the location of the monument (i.e., proposed AHP).

4 Discussion

Risk assessment of cultural heritage sites are of great importance. Prevention of threatened
sites and monuments is sometimes the only way to protect tangible heritage against both
natural and anthropogenic hazards. In this paper, more than 150 protected ancient mon-
uments and sites found in Paphos District (Cyprus) have been analyzed. Six different

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 9 Interpolation of the different normalization weights for each hazard (weight 1–6: tectonic; salinity;
road network; urban areas; soil erosion; and fires, respectively)

hazards have been studied in this paper: tectonic; salinity; road network (linked with
potential future expansion); urban areas; soil erosion; and fires threats.
The sites have been grouped into five main categories based on their characteristics. For
each cluster, weight factors have been allocated. Interpolation was then carried out pro-
viding six maps with the distributed weight. Then the overall AHP methodology was
applied. The results indicated that the majority of the sites grouped into class 4 (sites
located nearby the coastline, with low altitude and in the vicinity of urban areas and main
road network; limited threats from soil erosion and limited threats from fires; within active
tectonic regions) seem to be the most endangered sites from the whole Paphos District.
The proposed methodology and the overall results were confirmed from systematic
in situ visits in the area and observation of specific monuments, especially in the urban
center of Paphos. This observation is further in agreement with experts’ opinion (personal
communication) operating/working in the area for many years, which indicates that

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Fig. 10 Overall risk hazard map for the Paphos District, based on the clustering of the sites

Fig. 11 Overall risk hazard map for the Paphos District after applying traditional AHP methodology (from
Agapiou et al. 2015a)

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

archaeological sites/monuments in the specific geographical area of cluster 4, namely

within or in close proximity to the city of Paphos, are more endangered due to urban
pressure of the area. Intense use of this area, concentration of various heterogenic activ-
ities, high aquifer and salinity effects are among the most evident consequences on the
monuments of the area. In addition, still theoretically many damages on monuments could
be attributed to the tectonic activity in the area, an area noted for its seismicity since
antiquity (Historic Earthquakes—Cyprus Geological Survey Department).
Since all risks have been identified and mapped solely by remote sensing data and
products (see Agapiou et al. 2015a, b), the proposed methodology can be easily applied to
any other region of interest to the extent of assessing the overall hazard of different
monuments and sites. Remote sensing data are becoming nowadays an essential tool for
stakeholders so as to update information regarding the status of a region.
Future work will concentrate in adding further details regarding the single monuments’
characteristics like their state of preservation, their contemporary usage, their construction
techniques and materials, their structural behavior under certain conditions. In addition,
other factors including landslides, agricultural pressure, air pollution will be studied in the
future. Such approach will be able to provide more concrete and solid results regarding the
threats of the monuments and will facilitate the decisions to be made by stakeholders.

Acknowledgments Thanks are due to the Remote Sensing and Geo-environment Research Laboratory
(http://www.cyprusremotesensing.com/) of the Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics of the
Cyprus University of Technology for the support (http://www.cut.ac.cy).

References
Agapiou A, Nisantzi A, Lysandrou V, Mammouri R, Alexakis DD, Themistocleous K, Sarris A, Hadjimitsis
DG (2013) Mapping air pollution using earth observation techniques for cultural heritage. In: Pro-
ceedings of SPIE 8795. First international conference on remote sensing and geoinformation of the
environment (RSCy2013), p 87950K. doi: 10.1117/12.2028234
Agapiou A, Lysandrou V, Alexakis DD, Themistocleous K, Cuca B, Sarris A, Argyrou N, Hadjimitsis DG
(2015a) Cultural heritage management and monitoring using remote sensing data and GIS: the case
study of Paphos area, Cyprus. Comput Environ Urban Syst 54:230–239. doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.
2015.09.003
Agapiou A, Alexakis DD, Lysandrou V, Sarris A, Cuca B, Themistocleous K, Hadjimitsis DG (2015b)
Impact of urban sprawl to archaeological research: the case study of Paphos area in Cyprus. J Cult
Herit 16(5):671–680. doi:10.1016/j.culher.2014.12.006
Drdácký M (2007) Protecting the cultural heritage from natural disasters. Policy Department Structural and
Cohesion Policies, Culture and Education, European Parliament, IP/B/CULT/IC/2006_163
Fan G, Zhong D, Yan F, Yue P (2015) A hybrid fuzzy evaluation method for curtain grouting efficiency
assessment based on an AHP method extended by D numbers. Expert Syst Appl. Available online 11
September 2015, ISSN 0957-4174. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2015.09.006
Hadjimitsis D, Agapiou A, Alexakis D, Sarris A (2011) Exploring natural and anthropogenic risk for cultural
heritage in Cyprus using remote sensing and GIS. Int J Digit Earth 6(2):115–142
Karaca F (2015) An AHP-based indoor Air Pollution Risk Index Method for cultural heritage collections.
J Cult Herit 16(3):352–360
Lin G, Kou G (2015) Bayesian revision of the individual pair-wise comparison matrices under consensus in
AHP–GDM. Appl Soft Comput 35:802–811. ISSN 1568-4946
Negula ID, Sofronie R, Virsta A, Badea A (2015) Earth observation for the world cultural and natural
heritage. Agricult Agricult Sci Procedia 6:438–445
Oppio A, Bottero M, Ferretti V, Fratesi U, Ponzini D, Pracchi V (2015) Giving space to multicriteria
analysis for complex cultural heritage systems: the case of the castles in Valle D’Aosta Region, Italy.
J Cult Herit. Available online 7 April 2015, ISSN 1296-2074. doi:10.1016/j.culher.2015.03.003
Saaty TL (1977) A scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures. J Math Psychol 15(3):234–281

123
 Author's personal copy
Nat Hazards

Sara J, Stikkelman MR, Herder MP (2015) Assessing relative importance and mutual influence of barriers
for CCS deployment of the ROAD project using AHP and DEMATEL methods. Int J Greenh Gas
Control 41:336–357
Taboroff T (2000) Cultural heritage and natural disasters: incentives for risk management and mitigation. In:
Kreimer A, Arnold M (eds) Managing disaster risk in emerging economies, Disaster Risk Management
Series No, 2, pp 71–79
Tarchi D, Rudolf H, Pieraccini M, Atzeni C (2000) Remote monitoring of buildings using a ground-based
SAR: application to cultural heritage survey. Int J Remote Sens 21(18):3545–3551
Wang J-J (2015) Flood risk maps to cultural heritage: measures and process. J Cult Herit 16(2):210–220

123
View publication stats