AN INTEGRATED STRATEGY FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE

This document aims to introduce a proposal for an integrated strategy for cultural heritage developed by HMG laboratory in Milan thanks to the experience already carried out called MEDICI Framework. The proposed platform will cover research, industry and education taking advantage from the use of information communication technology (ICT). ICT and advanced technology will contribute both to the establishment and management of the platform and to the protection of cultural heritage. The platform will be both scalable and flexible enabling different levels of contribution from partners all over Europe and more. Starting from a basic information sharing mechanism the platform integrates knowledge, skills, expertise and best practice in order to provide a “common understanding” to partners. This section is designed in order to gather structure and preserve knowledge and expertise provided by the activity of partners increasing the added value of the platform. On top of the information sharing mechanism a layered structure of networking will connect thematic nodes creating competence / excellence centres both in the field of research, industry and education. Thanks to participants profiles it will be possible to aggregate research teams and operational partnerships in order to apply to research calls and bids. On the educational side, on the basis of a network of universities and research centres a set of education and training courses both at national and European level could be promoted. Prologue Cultural heritage has always been an interdisciplinary sector, a wide range of application involved from investigation to restoration, conservation, exploitation, education and communication each of them enjoying a different mix of expertises: art history, anthropology, social science, science of materials, chemistry, art, structural engineering, etc and more recently economy and marketing plus more and more high technology from lasers, to ICT and bio-tech. Such an articulated scenario with intrinsic richness of links and relations is potentially generating new skills and professional profiles often as a result of a “crossover” of already existing professional profiles. As a follow up of such a scenario both basic and applied research and educational strategies as to be duly tuned.