International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 59 (2021) 102266 Available online 24 April 2021 2212-4209/© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). A roadmap for making a salvage plan. Valuing and prioritising heritage objects Nina Kjølsen Jernæs Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), Norway A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Emergency planning Salvage plan Value Priority Cultural heritage Decision-making tool ABSTRACT One of many measures to prevent or at least mitigate damage to cultural heritage sites is to make a salvage plan for items with heritage value. Several guides and manuals have been written for museums to help in the work of ascribing values to their collections. A review of international work on emergency response planning, salvaging of items and detailed information on preventive work shows that only two guidelines mention how to prioritise heritage items when making a salvage plan. This article combines relevant guides and manuals with experiences from projects undertaken in Norwegian churches. It presents a roadmap that can be used by non-professionals in their work on salvage plans. The roadmap contains all steps from preparation and background work, to relevant discussions and assessment of heritage items, in combination with the defnition of salvage needs and of the vulnerability of the valuated items. By including when and how to involve the needed experts, this article offers a tool that flls a gap for the management and the owners of cultural historical buildings. 1. Introduction Through several projects dealing with emergency response and salvaging of valuable items in Norwegian churches, it has become evident that it is diffcult for the local managers and owners to draw up a salvage plan. Many of them are uncertain of how to assess value and how to prioritise. This paper discusses a number of value assessment methods and a number of designs for salvage plans. On the basis of workshop outcomes, the paper provides guidance for combining both ingredients into a value-based prioritised salvage plan. Existing guides and manuals have been written to provide advice in this work of valuing and prioritising collections in cultural institutions as part of museum management. This means that the implicit expertise resource is taken for granted. Ferraro and Henderson [1] present an evaluation of the manuals and emergency rescue plans used by cultural institutions, but how to ascribe values and prioritise items in the collection is not mentioned in their overview. Regarding the core fea- tures of the evaluated emergency response manuals, six of them had an evacuation plan, and only two had an evacuation priority [1]. There is a twofold knowledge gap regarding this work: the decision tools for valuing heritage items are not written for non-professionals in cultural heritage feld, and the existing manuals for valuation of heritage objects and museum items are in many cases too thorough regarding the in need of expert vision on the assessments. Therefore, it is argued that the existing guides and manuals needs modifcation, simplifcation and added assessment issues in order to be a useful tool for non-professionals when making salvage plans. 2. Research questions and methodology There seem to be a lack of manuals to guide non-professionals through the preparatory work of identifying and recording valuable objects on their sites in order to make a well-thought-out salvage and rescue plan. The research question is therefore as follows: How will a non-heritage expert be able to make well-considered choices when identifying the cultural signifcance of heritage objects and then use such information for item prioritisation in a salvage plan? This article aims to illustrate the importance of including a valuing process when making a salvage plan, and second, to suggest a roadmap that puts this into practice. To do so, the article provides a selection of the existing literature on valuing heritage objects, which is largely written for museum professionals. This is followed by an overview of the manuals on making salvage plans for buildings and collections that include heritage objects. The literature overview uncovers the knowl- edge gaps and functions as a basis for the developed roadmap for valuing and prioritising heritage objects. Four workshops in four counties in Norway have been carried out in 2020, with the goal of starting to make a salvage plan for the churches in their care. The discussions, obstacles E-mail address: nina.k.jernaes@niku.no. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijdrr https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102266 Received 30 November 2020; Received in revised form 29 March 2021; Accepted 14 April 2021