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HEritage Resilience Against CLimate Events on Site

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - HERACLES (HEritage Resilience Against CLimate Events on Site)

Reporting period: 2017-11-01 to 2019-04-30

CH monuments are exceptionally vulnerable to CC threats; any loss/deterioration of these outstanding assets has a negative impact on local and national communities.
When governmental budget constraints limit mitigation strategies cost-effective maintenance and restoration management tools need: HERACLES project wants to fulfill these needs through the development of the HERACLES ICT PLATFORM.
Main objective was to design, validate and promote responsive systems/solutions for effective resilience of CH against CC effects, considering as a mandatory premise a holistic, multidisciplinary approach through the involvement of different expertise (end-users, industry/SMEs, scientists, conservators/restorers and social experts, decision, and policymakers).
It was pursued with the development of a system exploiting an ICT platform able to collect and integrate multi-risks, multi-source information to provide complete and updated situational awareness and support decision to end-users for innovative measurements improving CH resilience, including new solutions for maintenance and conservation ( protocols, operational procedures and new materials.
It is a flexible tool, of general applicability. The Countries object of the study are Italy and Greece, since the majority of the worldwide CH is in these two Countries, their ancient civilisations are considered world Heritage and on the base of their similar risk exposure. HERACLES focus on historical centers representing the essence of the European Countries, constituting the essence of their Culture, Identity and Economy, were people lives and works.
In Greece, the Minoan Palace of Knossos is considered the center of the first civilization of the Mediterranean basin, namely the Minoan civilization.
As well, the Koules Fortress symbolises all monuments facing the risk of CC hazards coming from the sea (sea-level rise, increasing intensity of extreme weather phenomena which combined with the air and land associated hazards and increased salinity are accelerating corrosion and deterioration of materials and structures)
In Italy, Gubbio wants to represent all the historical monumental towns in Italy and in Europe, which were conceived and built in the past following criteria when the climate conditions were very different from nowadays and that suffers at present the effects of CC, which would endanger their safeguard. Here the hydrogeological risk (heavy rains, flood, landslides) is particularly important
Work and results M36:
-Survey on CH management guidelines/ procedures at international, European, national level; gaps and rooms for improvement were evidenced
-End-users needs and requirements definition; risk and vulnerability analysis; selection of the more suitable technologies to address specific issues on the HERACLES test-beds
-Methodologies to evaluate CC impacts, risk and vulnerability analysis. Advanced modeling for vulnerability and risk evaluation developed and customized
-State-of-the-art of the most suitable methodologies for wide-area surveillance, site diagnosis and monitoring was defined, with limits, critical issues, recovery plan to assess the status of the HERACLES test-beds
-Approaches to correlation and integration of sensing technologies on different temporal and spatial scale,
-Integration of socio-economic factors into risk analysis
-Protocols for diagnostic and analytical strategies for structures, materials and their weathering state evaluation
-Based on the investigations carried out at HERACLES test-beds, concrete solutions for the critical issues, were proposed
-New materials were designed and developed (consolidant and mortars). Evaluation of their applicability and long-term behavior
-New materials industrial process and relative transfer to the market feasibility were considered
-HERACLES ICT platform was developed (design, architecture definition, implementation and integration issues). Creation of a new Knowledge Base for CH domain, Risk Management Workflow. This platform integrates the Operational Procedures for end-users developed in the project. It includes Decision Support Systems and Common Alert Protocol
-The OPs were defined for disaster prevention, risk mitigation and crisis management
-DEMO activities proved the effectiveness of HERACLES approach/ methodology. The demonstration activities produced the BEST PRACTICE Manual
-Dissemination/communication activities: participation at many international and national events, publications on scientific journal and public press. Training courses on project activities/expertise were provided, also available @ HERACLES web-site
-Project impact evaluation done through activities dedicated to build and increase the social impact, societal resilience and cultural values awareness in civil society and young generations
-Exploitable results Identification considering all the outcomes from the project with commercial significance
-Market analysis and Business Model were performed to define commercialization of HERACLES outputs and economic growth
HERACLES is the first examples of a holistic technological solution, embedding in-situ sensors, aerial data and satellite data in an integrated manner. Its replicability in other scenarios relies on its knowledge base, allowing tailored platform versions to specific cases.
HERACLES proposes concrete solutions for CH safeguard (preventive maintenance, conservation, restoration actions) in terms of new developed materials (consolidants, mortars) developed and tailored for specific needs. These materials offer a flexibility degree to be adapted to other assets.
The user interface on geographic basis allows an easy access to the collected data immediately included in the site context.
The alert system based on proper thresholds allows to plan operation intervention at site in a more efficient way.
With respect to call IMPACTS:
Impact 1. HERACLES allows to define and implement reliable cost-effective long-term maintenance actions and operational procedures for risk management, in terms of effectiveness and sustainability. It allows to prioritize, define, optimize the maintenance interventions. The different expertise (monitoring and materials analysis and realization) synergic exploitation enables a positive feedback loop.
Impact 2. HERACLES benefitted of a significant involvement/interaction with public and private stakeholders, including government bodies. So, HERACLES provided an effective advice for adaptation and restoration policies.
Impact 3. HERACLES presented an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach based on the expertise integration and knowledge/information sharing/exchange between different actors in a wide set of policy-maker, cultural, scientific and technological contexts.
Impact 4. HERACLES promoted its innovative content to proactively target the stakeholders needs.
In both the HERACLES sites, future planned initiatives for safeguarding the CH assets studied in HERACLES are already undertaken, and will be carried on in the very next future (2019-2020) according to HERACLES findings and indications.
Social impact: the impact of HERACLES solutions on the local communities was evaluated with different initiatives to increase the civil society and young generations awareness not only towards HERACLES, but on the importance of CH as an identity factor and as glue to provide Europe with a supranational joining agent based on common cultural roots
HERACLES Monitoring activities at Gubbio Town Walls, Italy
HERACLES Partners Group
HERACLES meteo-data climate platform as precipitation and surface temperature, Crete, Greece
HERACLES Logo
HERACLES Monitoring activities at Knossos Palace, Greece
HERACLES geometrical survey at Consoli Palace, Gubbio, Italy
HERACLES historical analysis on Consoli Palace- PSP measurements-structural evaluation
HERACLES New developed Cement Mortar
HERACLES New developed Lime based Mortars