Cultural heritage is widely recognized to be at risk due to the impact of climate change and associated hazards, such as events of heavy rain, flooding, and drought. User-driven solutions are urgently required for sustainable management and protection of monumental complexes and related collections exposed to changes of extreme climate. With this purpose, maps of risk-prone areas in Europe and in the Mediterranean Basin have been produced by an accurate selection and analysis of climate variables (daily minimum and maximum temperature—Tn and Tx, daily cumulated precipitation—RR) and climate-extreme indices (R20mm, R95pTOT, Rx5 day, CCD, Tx90p) defined by Expert Team on Climate Change Detection Indices (ETCCDI). Maps are available to users via an interactive Web GIS (Geographic Information System) tool, which provides evaluations based on historical observations (high-resolution gridded data set of daily climate over Europe—E-OBS, 25 km) and climate projections (regional climate models—RCM, ~12 km) for the near and far future, under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. The tool aims to support public authorities and private organizations in the decision making process to safeguard at-risk cultural heritage. In this paper, maps of risk-prone areas of heavy rain in Central Europe (by using R20mm index) are presented and discussed as example of the outputs achievable by using the Web GIS tool. The results show that major future variations are always foreseen for the 30-year period 2071–2100 under the pessimistic scenario (RCP 8.5). In general, the coastal area of the Adriatic Sea, the Northern Italy, and the Alps are foreseen to experience the highest variations in Central Europe.

In the last 20 years, research on the observed and projected impacts of climate change on cultural heritage has led to significant developments regarding damage quantification and risk assessment, which unfortunately are not yet exhaustively transferred to practical applications and to the sector of policy and decision making. One of the major reasons for this still lacking alignment remains with the inadequate handover of quantitative data, which is a prerequisite for the development of measures and strategies for the mitigation of the impacts and risk reduction. In this paper, we focus on the methods and approaches put in place for the production of projections providing quantitative assessments of climate change-induced impacts in the near and far future (up to the 21st century) on outdoor built heritage mainly constituted by stone and stone-like materials. Our critical study found that different approaches have been applied for quantifying slow cumulative damage due to the ongoing variations of climate and air pollution parameters and to risk assessment caused by hydrometeorological extreme events induced by variations of temperature and precipitation. There is clear evidence that efforts are still needed for directing research to provide concrete solutions and tools addressed to meet the requirements of stakeholders and to solve the existing challenges in the field: selected effective models and tools are illustrated. The discussion is structured in order to highlight the driving role of research in supporting the definition of priorities for heritage managers and the development of strategies by decision and policy makers for the prevention and safeguarding of cultural heritage at risk.