The PennCHC has worked with the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative and over 70 interns and volunteers to collect data about museums, libraries, and archives around the world to compile a cultural repository inventory. This inventory, the first such digital list globally, can be used to analyze data about cultural heritage destruction during conflict and to assess damage to cultural heritage sites after conflict or natural disaster.
The PennCHC is leading the effort to assemble the Cultural Heritage and Armed Conflict Data Resource (CHAAC-DATA), which will enable the investigation of understudied topics about conflict dynamics, provide critical data about cultural heritage sites and the destruction they experience during conflict to the broader research community, and inform public policy around the protection of cultural heritage sites, humanitarian interventions, and international peace and security.