Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SCORE (Sustainable COnservation and REstoration of built cultural heritage)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-01-01 bis 2023-10-31
The SCORE project bring together an intersectoral, international and multidisciplinary group in order to strengthen collaborative research and innovation in eco-friendly conservation, restoration, and rehabilitation. It develops a series of innovative materials and methods dedicated to built cultural heritage conservation, integrating the circular economy concept, climate change and ecological footprint constraints, which will be used by stakeholders.
Specifically, the SCORE project contributes directly to the implementation of the following three research and innovation objectives:
1. The development of “green” innovations: materials and methods for the conservation of ancient buildings based on a circular economy philosophy which would make “an essential contribution to the EU’s efforts to develop a sustainable, low-carbon, resource-efficient and competitive economy’’.
2. Two-way assessment of impacts of the environment on materials and of materials on the environment: Climate conditions and atmosphere composition determine materials’ behaviour and, at the same time, the built conservation process impacts greenhouse gases emissions and then climate change.
3. Transfer to society: Training and knowledge transfer on both innovative and traditional materials and methods with a low environmental impact will concern consortium members, students, public and private owners, restorers, manufacturers, workers and volunteers on rehabilitation sites.
Renders from deconstruction of building in Paris have been collected, grinded and characterised. Several washing methods have been tested to extract the original sands from the render. The extracted sands have been employed in the production of new mortars in order to evaluate their performance.
A four-year in-situ evaluation of fungal community dynamics on limestone surfaces in the Temple of the Warriors at the Chichen Itza archaeological site in Mexico has been done, focusing on cleaning and treatment using nanoparticles. The results demonstrated significant impacts of cleaning and nanomaterial applications on cultivable fungal communities, altering composition, dynamics, and stone surface coloration.
Future and current climate data generated by Global Climate Models – GCMs under the RCP8.5 scenario and different dose-response formulas were combined to quantify the impact of climatic factors and pollution on built cultural heritage. The obtained results show that in most of the project sites, the impact of weathering processes such as salt weathering, surface recession and biomass accumulation will decrease (due to reduced pollution and reduced precipitation), except in Denmark; and others will increase in all the sites: damage index (lifetime multiplier) and thermal stress.
Transfer of SCORE results to different publics took place during events as the participation to the European Cultural Heritage days. During the seminar “La tradizione dei terrazzamenti: un patrimonio culturale in pericolo” (2021) in the framework of a series of evening conferences organized by Scuola di Riscostruzione di Accumoli for citizens CNR-ISAC presented issue related to the heritage of terraces on the Aeolian Islands.
During the Summer School Envimat 2022 in Lipari two activities, specifically addressed for Discovering the Aeolian Cultural Heritage, were organised: an urban trekking to discover the historic centre of Lipari with nature guides of Associazione Nesos of Lipari, and a public event “Best practices for the protection and valorisation of the Aeolian cultural landscape” with the participation of citizens, tourist and local authorities.
In April 2021, CNR-ISAC collaborate with the local association of Lipari (Dotteolie) in the organisation of a campaign to Recover and keep clean the most remote historical and naturalistic paths of the Alicudi Island, involving local workers, for maintaining paths clean, accessible and suitable for tourists and residents and recovering sections of partially collapsed dry-stone walls present on the paths.
SCORE contributes to the scientific development in the cultural heritage preservation field and in the identification of sustainable methodologies applicable to restoration. Through appropriate historical-archival and field investigations SCORE proposes valorisation solutions for the conservation of vernacular cultural heritage in case studies.
The development of new dose responses functions will be a major advance in the conservation as they will allow quantitatively determining future weathering of materials and the critical parameters that will control this future weathering. This knowledge will allow assessing and attenuating the weathering and to adapt cultural heritage to future conditions.
The application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) techniques to the conservation of built cultural heritage allows two research communities (conservation and LCA) to get closer and facilitate the technical and knowledge exchanges between them.
SCORE strengthens the European human capital in research and innovation by training and by the diffusion of knowledge through publications, workshops, seminars, and datasets.
SCORE is aligned with the EC priorities for 2019-24, especially the “European Green Deal” proposing resource-efficient solutions for a climate-neutral continent with “an economy that works for people”. The SCORE’s research contributes to: a) the sequestration of the CO2 in buildings due to the use of lime products, b) decreasing the environmental footprint of renovation and restoration work by the development on eco-sustainable materials and methods by the use of life cycle assessment techniques.
The technologies developed under SCORE, through the communication and dissemination actions, contributes to the development of a more sustainable society, an inclusive preservation of cultural heritage, and increase citizens awareness to cultural heritage conservation and climate change.