Author(s)

FABIO GARZIA, ENZO SAMMARCO

Abstract

Religious buildings are sites exposed to specific risks represented, for example, by theft, vandalism, damage, and terrorism that could injure both people and cultural/religious heritage. Therefore, they need proper actions to prevent the above risks and to protect against them using intrusion detection, access control, video surveillance, communication systems, security personnel and procedures properly integrated to realize an integrated system or solution. In this paper a novel risk analysis methodology for religious buildings (RARB) is illustrated, showing as a case study, without any loss of its general validity, its application to a Catholic church. The proposed risk analysis technique allows identifying the exact number of physical security protections (intrusion detection system, access control, video surveillance, communication devices, security personnel, etc.) that the religious site needs and the related performances as a function of the possible targets which can be attacked. It also allows avoiding overestimating the risk as in the case of including redundant protective countermeasures that sometimes result to be useless, thereby reducing the related extra costs involved. Furthermore, it results in being useful and suitable for plenty of other cultural heritage sites.

Keywords

risk analysis, security, safety, religious building, heritage site