Information at your fingertips

The Information Communication Technologies are transforming our way to work and to live. Their social and economical impact represents a key opportunity for new development in every field of knowledge. Another event is the awareness of the importance of cultural heritage and identity, and the need of exploit and manage it, in such a framework even “recent” and “future” heritage has to be taken into account. Objects created by industrial designers, early personal computer and modern architecture building are becoming “heritage”. The extension of the concept of cultural heritage of various nature, the relationship between their conservation and the relative fruition issues new challenges such as the combined utilisation of various databases online, the creation of supranational and multilingual dictionaries. The rapid obsolescence of technologies furthermore imposes the attention to data storage in order to ensure the “survival” of data sets for a reasonable period of time. However, the aspects, which most involve the online user, are both the interface and easy access to different subjects and contents. The contribution is focussed on advanced technologies and ICT tools for information and knowledge management addressed to built heritage conservation and management with specific reference to their application in the field of modern and contemporary architecture. Quality, kind and level of detail of involved information to be archived following the timeline is taken into account as well as workflow, different roles and skills. In order to ease the on site activities portable/ handheld devices enjoying wireless connection will be included as I/O devices. In order to clearly identify the context a general overview on different approaches world-wide is provided, it considers in detail a set of projects that address these issues.