Science and technologies for sustainable diagnostics of Cultural Heritage 

The spoke on Science and Technologies for Sustainable Diagnostics of Cultural Heritage is oriented towards the development of innovative scientific instruments and methods, new computational approaches, integrated applications, and digital technologies to deepen our understanding of material cultures, and the context in which tangible cultural heritage is created, exists and changes. To this aim, the innovation pathway of Heritage diagnostics will be driven by a problem-solving approach, fostering collaboration across Humanities, STEMs and with a broad range of heritage institutions, private companies, and stakeholders. It will be built by embedding new and emerging technologies and tools and exploring new methods for identification, knowledge, conservation, valorization, and transmission of cultural heritage knowledge.

The spoke activities around the WPs will be oriented to: 

1) Development of protocols related to the characterization of the artifacts/ecofacts (from the historical center to the archaeological remain) aimed to the managing of the Diagnostic Technologies also in consideration of the past/current interaction environment/heritage 

2) Development of multimodal and multiple scale lengths instruments and methods for the heritage material characterization. 

3) Understanding the degradation mechanisms of heritage materials induced by climate changes to support the development of protocols for preventive conservation. 

4) Developing sustainable analytical protocols and low-cost Internet of Things solutions to monitor and manage indoor air quality and microclimatic conditions especially in museums, exhibition rooms, and deposits. 

5) Development of advanced diagnostics and scientific methods for the analysis and valorization of organic materials in cultural heritage. 

6) Developing innovative digital technologies (semantic data, AI/ML, visualization, interaction) to support data-driven research, enabling a new paradigm for data collection, integration, processing, visualization, annotation, and documentation. 

Planned activities are:

• Design of advanced multimodal and multi-scale diagnostics 

• Commissioning of instruments and validation with painted objects, bronze sculptures, and wooden artefacts 

• Definition of the key-parameters (e.g., environmental agents, microorganisms) that govern the degradation mechanisms of selected heritage materials/objects (i.e., polychrome surfaces, metals, and stones) and design of predictive models of their degradation

• Definition of monitoring strategies and preventive conservation guidelines of heritage objects at risk of degradation 

• Improvement in the effectiveness of automatic extraction of features and patterns from remote sensing heterogeneous data for archaeological site detection and cultural heritage risk analysis and monitoring 

• Smart management and monitoring of indoor air quality in museums, exhibition rooms, and deposits 

• Close range imaging performance improvement for the diagnosis of historical built heritage and artifacts 

• Development and implementation of digital, AI-based methods, chemical/physical and molecular approaches for studying the biological and palaeobiological materials 

• Development and implementation of non-invasive taphonomy based methods as well as chemical/physical and molecular approaches to assess diagenetic processes in organic materials

• Study of CH stakeholders needs concerning data encoding/integration/processing 

• Design of digital tools for data sharing and processing, designed to support CH stakeholders in the management and analysis of diagnostic results 

• Building of interdisciplinary protocols based on the integration of conventional and innovative techniques to enhance the interpretation of the architectural and archaeological contexts. 

• Definition of common guidelines, that apply also to the use of digital tools, for research applications open to stakeholders.