Fostering holistic natural-risk resilience in spatial planning

Natural disasters lead to the destruction of (land/urban) scape values and cultural heritage, social and cultural ties, and directly impact spatial resources that appeal to spatial planning with a view to enhancing the current resilience and reducing future risks. The aim of this research is to build a framework of knowledge to integrate perspectives of natural risk resilience (natural risk, cultural heritage, communities, spatial resources, and spatial planning) tested on research cases in areas affected by earthquakes in Italy and Croatia. The Heritage Urbanism approach is applied by comparing the Central Italy disaster and trends in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, providing identity factors and evaluation criteria to assist in reading existing resilience models and building new models. Structures to interrelate aspects of (land/urban) scape resilience and models of natural risk resilience contribute to enhancing risk reduction and resilience in urban planning in high-risk situations. Achieving holistic natural risk resilience is possible when (land/urban) scape, cultural, identifying, social, spatial, planning, and economic resilience models are integrated such that they benefit from each other. Spatial planning responses to natural disasters that affect cultural and (land/urban) scape heritage and spatial resources must be planned in close interaction with local communities to improve preparedness and prevent destruction, damage, and loss of collective memory, tradition, and identity.