Policy Based Best Practice Collection

What is the policy based best practice collection?

The Policy Based Best Practice Collection brings together good practices of policymaking for transformative resilience in cultural landscapes. It is based on a systematic literature review and focuses on the policy domains most relevant for resilience building: spatial planning, cultural heritage management, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

The collection explores the state of the art in terms of geographic scope, policy domains, planning tool typologies, involved stakeholders, barriers, enablers and recommendations. It provides a top-down knowledge base that can be used to support policy learning and guide the development of more integrated, adaptive and long-term planning approaches.

Why does the good practice collection matter?

Decision-makers often lack easy-to-use resources and methodologies to access robust science-based knowledge and translate it into policy instruments. The collection helps address this gap by identifying transferable patterns from existing policy practices and recommendations.

The results show that transformative resilience is most often addressed at the local scale, followed by the regional, national and supranational levels. Climate change adaptation is the most frequently addressed policy domain, followed by spatial planning and disaster risk reduction. Cultural heritage management is addressed far less often, showing that cultural heritage remains underexplored in transformative resilience policy.

The review also shows that policy instruments for transformative resilience are mostly strategies, knowledge and innovation tools or programmes, and plans. Laws and decrees are much less common. This suggests that transformative resilience is often framed as a goal or direction, rather than as a binding requirement of planning procedures.

The main barriers identified are fragmentation, rigidity, short-termism and limited resources. The corresponding enablers are collaborative and participatory governance, flexibility through adaptiveness and monitoring, and a policy vision that focuses on long-term implementation and a holistic view of policy domains.

How were the good practices collected?

The collection was developed through a systematic literature review using a PRISMA-based approach. Search terms were built around transformation, resilience, policy, good practice and Europe. The search was limited to English-language articles and conference papers from relevant fields including social sciences, environmental sciences, engineering, agriculture, economics and multidisciplinary sciences.

The review identified 524 records through Scopus and Web of Science. After duplicate removal and screening through title, keywords, abstract and full text, 56 records were included in the final review. These were analysed through qualitative and quantitative extraction. Information was collected on policy domains, administrative and territorial scales, policy instrument typologies, stakeholders, RescueME resilience capitals, cultural heritage, barriers, enablers and policy recommendations.