Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENIGMA (ENDORSING SAFEGUARDING, PROTECTION, AND PROVENANCE MANAGEMENT OF CULTURAL HERITAGE)
Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-06-30
Cultural Heritage (CH) is a testimony of past human activity, and, as such, Cultural Objects exhibit great variety in their nature, size and complexity; from small artefacts and museum items to cultural landscapes, from historic buildings and ancient monuments to city centres and archaeological sites.
ENIGMA shall achieve excellence in the protection of CGs and artefacts from man-made threats by contributing to identification, traceability, and provenance research of CGs as well as by safeguarding and monitoring of endangered heritage sites. ENIGMA objectives are designed to help the involved stakeholders better respond to this complex, and multi-dimensional problem, and leverage active collaboration by fostering and enabling interlinking of databases, and evidence-based deployment of preventative measures.
ENIGMA has the following concrete objectives, which are categorized in three types Scientific & innovation objectives, Technical Objectives, and Demonstration, Dissemination & exploitation objectives.
The Scientific and Innovation objectives are: SO1) Co-Desing of the novel concept of a Unique Authenticity Identifier (UAI), SO2) Mitigate anthropogenic threats of heritage sites by integrating earth observation techniques and GIS to produce remote sensing tools, and SO3) Develop an advanced decision-support and communication platform.
The Technical objectives are: TO1) Co-creation, development, and testing/validation of UAI tools, TO2) Advanced machine-learning for CH object clustering and stratification, and TO3) Advanced metadata analysis for interlinking existing disparate data sources.
Finally, the Demonstration, Dissemination & exploitation objectives are: DO1) an innovative and effective communication/dissemination tool for stakeholders’ liaison, DO2) Implementation of the ENIGMA tools/application in realistic environment, DO3) Validation of tools through pilot cases- Policy brief, and DO4) Disseminate and communicate the technological, conceptual, and practical outcomes for raising awareness amongst the wider community of CH professionals and public and exploit synergies with other EU projects, enhancing societal impact.
The developed tools/applications and the ENIGMA platform are going to be testes, evaluated and validate through four pilot cases, namely Pilot case 1) Novel documentation of museum items, Pilot case 2) Identification and Tracing of unregistered CGs, Pilot case 3) Monitoring of endangered Heritage sites, and Pilot case 4) Validation of the ENIGMA Decision-Support and Data/Communication Platform.
ENIGMA will develop non-destructive methods and digital tools for the protection, identification, and traceability of cultural goods through the development of the UAI, advanced ML/AI tools for metadata analysis and interlinking of disparate databases, advanced identification of un-registered CGs, the exploitation of Copernicus infrastructure for monitoring of illegal digging, war zones looting, conflict areas, and by achieving consensus on the necessary data contents and structures aiming at enhancing identification and traceability. As a result, ENIGMA will contribute to the protection and safeguarding of both movable and immovable CGs.
ENIGMA will contribute to the protection, tracing, restitution and safeguarding, as well as provenance research of European endangered cultural heritage by advancing monitoring of the sites where the probability of illegal digging and looting is high, defining the necessary data acquisition processes for the detailed documentation of CGs, devise workflows for information sharing among various database and through the development of the Collaborative stakeholder platform and the public engagement API.
ENIGMA will produce evidence-based research to support the deployment of preventative measures against looting and illicit trade of cultural goods through the validation of all the developed tools/application in real world pilot cases. The ENIGMA Decision-support platform will include all the developed tools and the public involvement application. The evaluation and validation of these tools in realistic operational conditions will lead to the creation of a number of policy recommendations and briefs that will fuel up the adoption of standardized preventive measures in Europe.
Finally, ENIGMA will raise awareness, mobilize, and further strengthen cooperation among citizens, stakeholders, experts, policy makers and all actors involved. ENIGMA will disseminate the important outcomes through targeted actions: participation to conferences, scientific publications, briefing papers, workshops, clustering and liaison activities, free training course and webinars, synergetic joint EU projects activities and finally issuing policy briefs.
ENIGMA shall achieve excellence in the protection of CGs and artefacts from man-made threats by contributing to identification, traceability, and provenance research of CGs as well as by safeguarding and monitoring of endangered heritage sites. ENIGMA objectives are designed to help the involved stakeholders better respond to this complex, and multi-dimensional problem, and leverage active collaboration by fostering and enabling interlinking of databases, and evidence-based deployment of preventative measures.
ENIGMA has the following concrete objectives, which are categorized in three types Scientific & innovation objectives, Technical Objectives, and Demonstration, Dissemination & exploitation objectives.
The Scientific and Innovation objectives are: SO1) Co-Desing of the novel concept of a Unique Authenticity Identifier (UAI), SO2) Mitigate anthropogenic threats of heritage sites by integrating earth observation techniques and GIS to produce remote sensing tools, and SO3) Develop an advanced decision-support and communication platform.
The Technical objectives are: TO1) Co-creation, development, and testing/validation of UAI tools, TO2) Advanced machine-learning for CH object clustering and stratification, and TO3) Advanced metadata analysis for interlinking existing disparate data sources.
Finally, the Demonstration, Dissemination & exploitation objectives are: DO1) an innovative and effective communication/dissemination tool for stakeholders’ liaison, DO2) Implementation of the ENIGMA tools/application in realistic environment, DO3) Validation of tools through pilot cases- Policy brief, and DO4) Disseminate and communicate the technological, conceptual, and practical outcomes for raising awareness amongst the wider community of CH professionals and public and exploit synergies with other EU projects, enhancing societal impact.
The developed tools/applications and the ENIGMA platform are going to be testes, evaluated and validate through four pilot cases, namely Pilot case 1) Novel documentation of museum items, Pilot case 2) Identification and Tracing of unregistered CGs, Pilot case 3) Monitoring of endangered Heritage sites, and Pilot case 4) Validation of the ENIGMA Decision-Support and Data/Communication Platform.
ENIGMA will develop non-destructive methods and digital tools for the protection, identification, and traceability of cultural goods through the development of the UAI, advanced ML/AI tools for metadata analysis and interlinking of disparate databases, advanced identification of un-registered CGs, the exploitation of Copernicus infrastructure for monitoring of illegal digging, war zones looting, conflict areas, and by achieving consensus on the necessary data contents and structures aiming at enhancing identification and traceability. As a result, ENIGMA will contribute to the protection and safeguarding of both movable and immovable CGs.
ENIGMA will contribute to the protection, tracing, restitution and safeguarding, as well as provenance research of European endangered cultural heritage by advancing monitoring of the sites where the probability of illegal digging and looting is high, defining the necessary data acquisition processes for the detailed documentation of CGs, devise workflows for information sharing among various database and through the development of the Collaborative stakeholder platform and the public engagement API.
ENIGMA will produce evidence-based research to support the deployment of preventative measures against looting and illicit trade of cultural goods through the validation of all the developed tools/application in real world pilot cases. The ENIGMA Decision-support platform will include all the developed tools and the public involvement application. The evaluation and validation of these tools in realistic operational conditions will lead to the creation of a number of policy recommendations and briefs that will fuel up the adoption of standardized preventive measures in Europe.
Finally, ENIGMA will raise awareness, mobilize, and further strengthen cooperation among citizens, stakeholders, experts, policy makers and all actors involved. ENIGMA will disseminate the important outcomes through targeted actions: participation to conferences, scientific publications, briefing papers, workshops, clustering and liaison activities, free training course and webinars, synergetic joint EU projects activities and finally issuing policy briefs.
During the first half of the project the ENIGMA project identified the user requirements and functional specifications of the ENIGMA solution. It achieved these goals by performing a state-of-the-art analysis, user requirements and gap analysis. Furthermore, ENIGMA develops the early reference architecture of the NEIGMA platform by defining the technological requirements and CH threats management. Finally, ENIGMA planned the pilot cases and their implementation methodology and validation.
In addition ENIGMA developed the initial version of the technologies of digital identification and tracking of cultural goods (UAI, AI/ML tools for contextual analysis CG stratification, the joint workspace, the WebCrawler, and the earth observation toolkit). It also developed the first version of the technologies for decision-support and public engagement which includes the advanced decision support system, the scenario building engine and the provenance research tools.
All the developed tools/application/technologies have been integrated to the first version of the ENIGMA Decision-Support Platform and Data/Communication Platform.
In addition ENIGMA developed the initial version of the technologies of digital identification and tracking of cultural goods (UAI, AI/ML tools for contextual analysis CG stratification, the joint workspace, the WebCrawler, and the earth observation toolkit). It also developed the first version of the technologies for decision-support and public engagement which includes the advanced decision support system, the scenario building engine and the provenance research tools.
All the developed tools/application/technologies have been integrated to the first version of the ENIGMA Decision-Support Platform and Data/Communication Platform.
The UAI, advanced ML/AI tools for metadata analysis and interlinking of disparate databases, the earth observation toolkit and the Alert system are nondestructive methods and digital tolls that will highly contribute to the protection and safeguarding of both movable and immovable CGs. Furthermore, in addition to these tools the enhanced documentation workflows combined with the developed methodologies for information sharing among various databases, the provenance research tools the collaborative stakeholder platform, and the public engagement API will contribute to the protection, tracing, restitution and safeguarding, as well as provenance research of European endangered cultural heritage.
The results of the testing, evaluation and validation of all the developed tools and the ENIGMA platform through the implementation of the pilot cases in the second half of the project, will lead to the creation of policy recommendations and briefs thus producing evidence-based research to support the deployment of preventative measures against looting and illicit trade of cultural goods.
The results of the testing, evaluation and validation of all the developed tools and the ENIGMA platform through the implementation of the pilot cases in the second half of the project, will lead to the creation of policy recommendations and briefs thus producing evidence-based research to support the deployment of preventative measures against looting and illicit trade of cultural goods.