Flood risk assessment of urban cultural heritage based on PSR conceptual model with game theory and cloud model – A case study of Nanjing

Urban cultural heritage has rich historical, artistic, and scientific value. However, due to the increasing occurrence of extreme rainfall events globally, urban cultural heritage sites face increasing flood disaster risks. A flood risk assessment tool offers a scientific foundation for decision-making and is critical for understanding and managing flood risk for these heritage sites. There are several shortcomings in the previous literature, such as its failure to consider the emergency response capability of cultural heritage sites; nor does it reveal the uncertainty and nonlinear relations between assessment indexes and risk levels. To address these limitations of the previous research, this study builds a novel and easy-to-implement index-based flood risk assessment method based on the pressure-state-response conceptual model with game theory and cloud model (PSR-GT-CM). This study shows that the PSR-GT-CM is a feasible and effective method for flood risk assessment of urban cultural heritage sites. This method can be used to provide an accurate and efficient preliminary assessment of flood risk for urban cultural heritage sites with limited data and can be a useful reference for making decisions about the protection of cultural heritage sites and identifying cultural heritage sites that need a more detailed analysis. This method is illustrated through an application to 93 national-level protected cultural heritage sites in Nanjing, China.