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Puerto Rico's cultural resources are stitched into the fabric of society in tangible and intangible ways

• Cultural resources are repositories of collective memory and identity and are key for community well-being and resiliency after disasters.
• Archival records libraries, museums, and historic properties are integral to the educational system and to the continuity of government.
• Cultural resources have important links to the economy through entrepreneurship and tourism, making up about 8 percent of Puerto Rico's GDP.

Following a natural disaster, recovery of cultural resources addresses short-, medium-, and long-term priorities

• Recovery entails repairing historic structures, landscapes, and their collections and, for artists, repairing work spaces and recovering economic losses.
• Resuming business and reopening cultural institutions to the public is important for economic recovery.
• In the longer term, full recovery requires increasing preparedness and the resiliency of all cultural resources.

Primary challenges for understanding hurricane damage to Puerto Rico's cultural assets

• Limited prehurricane information is available for comparison.
• Gaps remain in understanding hurricanes' full effects on properties, collections, and artisans.
• Comprehensive cost estimates are necessarily rough approximations because no standard method exists for out-of-sample extrapolation for such assets.

Sustained and well-coordinated action by a broad range of entities is necessary for successful recovery of cultural resources following disasters

• Post-hurricane, both public and private entities have mobilized to identify and address the cultural community's needs.
• Enhancing existing federal recovery frameworks will better equip cultural institutions, arts organizations, artists, and historic properties to effectively address disasters before, during, and after their occurrence.

Puerto Rico has a wealth of cultural, historical, and artistic resources that are integral to its cultural identity and sense of place, to tourism, to the arts industry, and to the economy. In September 2017, many of those resources were devastated in Hurricanes Irma and Maria. In this report, the authors present an overview of Puerto Rico's cultural resources and their importance, the findings from numerous rapid assessments of storm damage, and details for the recovery actions in Puerto Rico's economic and disaster recovery plan. Based on the rapid assessments, short- and long-term recovery planning was conducted in collaboration with Puerto Rico's cultural resources managers, federal agency personnel, and other stakeholders. The needs identified in the assessments led to eight recovery courses of action (COAs) for cultural, historic, and artistic resources. The COAs address immediate precursor actions necessary for recovery, short-term stabilization of assets, and medium- to long-term recovery needs along with increased resilience of cultural resources. The COAs also address economic recovery, including the role of cultural resources in the economy and the promotion of alternative tourism to drive economic development.

• Chapter One

  Introduction and Background: Cultural Resources in Puerto Rico

• Chapter Two

  Key Cultural Resources, What Recovery Entails, and How Recovery Planning Was Performed

• Chapter Three

  Prestorm Risks, Assessed Damage, and Recovery Needs: Historic Sites, Cultural

• Chapter Four

  Prestorm Risks, Assessed Damage, and Recovery Needs: Arts Organizations, Artists, and Artisans

• Chapter Five

  Sector Summary and Conclusions

• Appendix A

  A Framework for Understanding the Cultural Resources Response and Recovery Effort After Hurricanes Irma and Maria

• Appendix B

  Extended Description of NCR Courses of Action

• Appendix C

  Historic Properties Cost-Estimating Methodology

• Appendix D

  Artisan Survey

• Appendix E

  Alternative Tourism Analysis Executive Summary