Alessio DI IORIO
(ALMA SISTEMI SAS, Italy)
Keywords: Remote sensing, risk assessment
Abstract:
Nowadays Europe’s Cultural Heritage (CH) is at risk, endangered by environmental processes and anthropogenic pressures. Physical and chemical destruction and degradation of structures and artefacts amplify the natural deterioration and reduce the ability of the soil to preserve CH. In addition to physical damages, the intensive agriculture activities and the effects of climate changes are responsible of the increase of soil erosion affecting structure stability and producing significant negative consequences on the conservation of the archaeological artefacts. In this scenario, authorities in charge to CH preservation have a strong requirement for systematic, effective, usable and affordable tools and services to monitor the degradation process to enable preventive maintenance and to reduce the cost of the restoration.
The broad spectra of Satellite Earth Observations (EO) provide the ideal platform to undertake a wide range of effective, cost-efficient and up-to-date programmable analysis, as a support to traditional tools.
The project CLIMA (Cultural Landscape risk Identification, Management and Assessment), funded under the Joint Program Initiative- Cultural Heritage programme, addresses the design and development of a multi-task platform, combining advanced remote sensing technologies with GIS application for mapping and long term monitoring of archaeological CH in order to identify changes due to climate changes and anthropic pressures. The EO processing chain will address the major risks affecting CH including the degradation due to atmosphere, soil erosion structural stability and vegetation as well as risks due to anthropic pressure.
The CLIMA Platform will enable the authorities responsible for the preservation of the archeological cultural landscape to carry out an effective planning and implementation policy of preventive maintenance. The project CLIMA is leaded by University of “La Tuscia”, Italy and includes ALMA Sistemi sas, Italy and partners from Cyprus (Technical University of Cyprus), United Kingdom (University Of Stirling) and Denmark (University of Copenhagen).