Purpose: The study, within the Increasing Resilience of Cultural Heritage (ResCult) project, aims to support civil protection to prevent, lessen and mitigate disasters impacts on cultural heritage using a unique standardised-3D geographical information system (GIS), including both heritage and risk and hazard information.Design/methodology/approach: A top-down approach, starting from existing standards (an INSPIRE extension integrated with other parts from the standardised and shared structure), was completed with a bottom-up integration according to current requirements for disaster prevention procedures and risk analyses. The results were validated and tested in case studies (differentiated concerning the hazard and type of protected heritage) and refined during user forums.Findings: Besides the ensuing reusable database structure, the filling with case studies data underlined the tough challenges and allowed proposing a sample of workflows and possible guidelines. The interfaces are provided to use the obtained knowledge base.Originality/value: The increasing number of natural disasters could severely damage the cultural heritage, causing permanent damage to movable and immovable assets and tangible and intangible heritage. The study provides an original tool properly relating the (spatial) information regarding cultural heritage and the risk factors in a unique archive as a standard-based European tool to cope with these frequent losses, preventing risk.

Sustainable Development (SD) is a fundamental objective in the European Union (EU) and transport is considered one of the key challenges necessary to achieve it. Although transport is mostly contested from the environmental dimension, an investigation of peer-reviewed literature along with EU policy documents suggests that the transport and accessibility (T&A) criteria of infrastructure, accessibility distance, and multimodality can positively contribute to SD. However, despite this synergetic relation between T&A and SD, a practical analysis of such enablers is unknown at the regional European level. Therefore, this study investigates the Mediterranean as a study area by analyzing 79 identified passenger ports as passenger transport land-sea interaction points. Based on open access data, port infrastructure and ship accessibility, hinterland accessibility, and multimodality are evaluated as the passenger T&A enablers for SD. Comparative geo-spatial analyses are also carried out among the passenger ports’ levels of enablers by using the data normalization method. These data driven comprehensive analytical results can bring added value to SD policy and planning initiatives in the Mediterranean. This study may also contribute to the development of relevant passenger port performance indicators for boosting port or regional competition and attractiveness towards SD.