The HOLAHERIS objectives represent original advancements in scientific research. The extension of point cloud-to-numerical model procedures also to non-comprehensive point cloud input data (i.e. the most common circumstance), thanks to its pioneering integration with immersive frameworks and to automatic solid model block filling, represents a novelty. The novel integration of structural health monitoring and numerical modelling to create a decision-making framework for cultural heritage structures conservation guarantees safeguard policies and real-time smart management for asset owners. The accurate and efficient block-based dynamic simulations of masonry structures accounting for rocking dissipative phenomena, as well as the original sub-modelling procedure, represent significant advances in the state-of-the-art and will keep affordable the computational demand for large-scale structures, also in the dynamic regime. The development of micro-mechanics-based numerical models to reproduce damage due to salt crystallization pressure in the pores of porous media represents a novelty in the field of poromechanics, and will allow reliable numerical predictions of material ageing in historic building materials.
These advancements appear strategic for European society, given the large number of cultural heritage structures in Europe constantly threatened by earthquakes, soil settlements and material deterioration. Furthermore, the accurate structural assessment of cultural heritage structures is going to minimize the cost and the magnitude of the strengthening interventions, maximizing the authenticity of European heritage, and contributing to sustainability and resilience of built environment. As way of example, the advancements achieved in HOLAHERIS will be exploited to develop and fine-tune a digital twin of the Garisenda leaning tower in Bologna (Italy), which is suffering from material ageing. The new structural analysis method developed in HOLAHERIS for cultural heritage structures conservation will be made available to the wider public of European practitioners and conservation professionals. Since the method will not be specifically based on software packages but on a sequence of operations and data management, its principle can be followed by a large audience.
