Climate changes as gradual changes in temperature, atmospheric humidity, rainfall and wind intensity, as well as rising sea levels together with the occurrence of extreme weather events, is already affecting cultural heritage sites worldwide. Although these areas have always been and will continue to be subject to interactions with their environment, climate change is an additional potential threat, exacerbating expected decay rates and/or contributing to new decay changes. Additionally, the occurrence of natural disasters, because of climate change, threaten the people life by causing the damages on the properties, and the societies encounter the significant cultural and socio-economic problems. Natural disasters may occur naturally and by human impacts for example forest fires that the main causes are generally human’s stolidity. The natural disaster management is especially important by means of tactical and management decisions, and also the operational activities in various phases of the disasters for society’s resilience. It is a fact that the protection of cultural heritage from the consequences of natural disasters due to climate change is gaining more and more ground on the international agenda. Furthermore, the G20 summit and the European Commission are constantly paying more attention to the importance of the past for the changes of the future. However, many areas affected by natural disasters are tourist destinations where the architectural cultural heritage and the natural environment are attractions for tourism. The aim of this article is to investigate the socio-economic results of the natural disasters on tourism in areas of architectural cultural heritage. Floods are the second most frequent disaster in Greece after forest fires. The most recent example is the flood in the wider area of Thessaly, in September 2023, which will also be a case study of this announcement. Many traditional settlements of Pelion, which were famous tourist destinations for their architecture and natural environment, suffered severe damage from the flood, as well as some of the reconstructed and reused industrial buildings of the 19th century in Volos, mud seeped in, covering the basement surfaces at a height of about 3 meters. At the same time, dealing with them with measures such as the mapping of flooded areas using new technological means will be discussed, which will demonstrate the necessity of managing a disaster through records that will provide usable data, so that prevention and mitigation measures can be designed and implemented based on advanced technical tools.

Climate change, natural disasters, touristic destnations, architectural cultural heritage, natural environment