WELCOME TO THE INFORMATION BANK
Last update: 16 April 2026
The heritage sector worldwide is custodian of a vast body of knowledge concerning all aspects of human interactions with the climate. Historic weather events, vernacular buildings, society and planning, contemporary architecture, the use and context of traditional and ‘modern’ materials, background science, and the transmission of knowledge (including through storytelling): ‘heritage’ integrates all these and many other aspects of the history of the human environment. Heritage specialists are therefore able to bring an array of critical information to the table for understanding carbon use, for undertaking mitigation, and for planning adaptation. It is therefore unfortunate that much of this knowledge is poorly recognised by other professionals and most policymakers. On top of this, the extreme range of understandings encompassed by ‘heritage’ has itself tended to fragment the available information, making it difficult to locate.
On this site, the CHN is attempting to establish a protocol for gathering together into a single on-line location some of that body of knowledge, in a way that not only makes it easier to locate existing resources, but also gives practitioners a place to upload their own reports , presentations and other and information, to make that available more widely. The information we are collecting includes (but is not limited to) the background information about science and history, the case studies and reports, and the presentations which we believe may be useful to researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers.
The structure of the CHN Information Bank has deliberately been kept as simple as possible, with on-line folders used to hold only digital resources, and each folder having a Table of Contents document that summarises all the information, including links to point users to resources too complicated to upload to this site in their entirety.
The information collected here has been submitted and collated from a wide variety of sources, many peer-reviewed.
It has not been vetted by the CHN, who cannot accept any responsibility for its accuracy or for any issues that many arise from its use.
We invite users to upload their own resources and ideas for inclusion; please ensure you fill in the details into the table of contents for the Level-3 folder you have selected. If the information could happily sit in more than one folder – for example, if the recordings of an event include a video of particular interest – it is possible to upload the same information into more than one location, but please do update all tables. If you have any questions, please contact the info@climateheritage.org.
The structure will be adjusted as we see what works and doesn’t work – and we welcome comments on this aspect as well – but currently uses the following structure:
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LEVEL 1 |
LEVEL 2 |
LEVEL 3 |
DESCRIPTION |
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Welcome |
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General details about the Information Bank + Subfolders |
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Background information |
General information about the types of information held in the subfolders Subfolders for books, for papers and other short publications, and for videos. |
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Books |
General document, including a table with descriptions of the
books and publisher info |
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Papers + Publications |
General document, including a table with descriptions of
papers and DOI links to open-source papers |
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Videos + Multimedia |
General document, including a table with descriptions of video resources such as lectures, and websites, including links where these may be watched/used for free Uploaded presentations and other multimedia |
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Case Studies |
Individual Case Studies |
General document, including a table with descriptions of
case studies, and links to where these may be accessed
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Reports |
Individual Reports |
General document, including a table with descriptions of
reports, and links to where these may be accessed |
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Events |
Individual Events |
General document, including a table with descriptions of
events, and links to where these may be accessed |
Please note that the range and complexity of the information included here makes it impossible for the CHN to vet the entries, so we urge users to exercise their own critical judgments when using the resources offered. We also ask that the information is always fully attributed to the sources that have supplied it.
A final note: CHN collaborators such as the DBTH will be drawing on the resources here to feed into peer-reviewed specialist databases, to which we will provide links.