الفهرس 
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
During the last two decades, the G.W table in H.C is in a continuous unprecedented rising. Consequently, it is threating the safety of existing historical buildings in the city. One of the major reasons of this was filling most of the open water resources in H.C started from the first half of the 19th century, such as birkat al-Azbakkiyya, birkat al-Fil, and al-Khalij al-Masri canal. The urban transformation created by filling a lot of water resources was the first step for the substantial changes in the built fabric of the historical city that marked climatic, environmental, and social changes. Additional harmful consequence is the continuous unprecedented rise of
G.W that affects the foundations of historic buildings. The rising dampness throughout the built historic fabric contributes in damaging the building systems and accentuates the state of the conservation of many valuable monuments. This thesis provides an assessment of the water urban features in H.C prior to their
filling and indicates through the survey of selected monuments the G.W effects on the built fabric. It proposes retrofitting approaches based on the control of the rising G.W, its collection and profiting from it. The thesis investigates the possibility to
channeling it in order to fulfil various needed purposes of which: reintegrating water features in selected public spaces to enhance the climatic conditions of the historical
city; reusing historic architectural elements that were of particular value in the historic city such as cisterns and water tanks. It concludes with approaches to improve the qualities of the open public spaces in H.C, as well as to accentuate and help interpreting some of its outstanding values which will assist the SDGs. Not to mention the climatic control of the existing historical buildings besides tackling the G.W rising problems. The study adopts a qualitative approach to demonstrate suitable models extracted from international examples to be suggested to H.C.