Disaster Risk Management of Cultural Heritage in Urban Areas

The selection of participants is an important component of the overall course organisation as it directly affects the long term impact of the course. Different types of target audiences for the course have already been identified in the previous section. Within these broad groups, participants with the maximum potential to effectively apply the training they receive through the course should be selected. Therefore, criteria such as their official designation and basic knowledge and skill level are important. Potential leaders, whether they are administrators, policy makers, professionals or students should be identified since they would likely contribute to the overall goal of capacity building in the long term. At the same time, participants from diverse disciplinary backgrounds related to cultural heritage conservation/management and disaster risk management should be selected to enable mutual learning through group interaction and team projects. The process of selection should be based on qualifications, skill sets and experience, but also take into account the participant’s objectives and goals along with other soft skills.

For instance, in the International Training Courses organised by R-DMUCH, a concerted effort is made to have an equal number of participants from the cultural heritage and disaster management fields. These include professionals and administrators as well as researchers. Moreover the selection of participants is made in two stages:

A. Shortlisting on the basis of applications submitted by candidates.

B. Telephone interviews with shortlisted candidates.

Telephone interviews should be conducted by an expert panel set up by the organisers and should include course coordinators and other experts from relevant fields. The selection of participants should attempt to fulfil the objectives set out by the organisers of the course. The candidate selection criteria used to evaluate applicants to the International Training Course organised by R-DMUCH is listed as an example.