Innovative technologies for the conservation of monuments: an integrated solution for on line planned conservation

The state of art of cultural heritage in Europe is well known and evident, the wealth of artworks and goods, expression of every kind of art from graffiti to frescos and architecture, issued along the centuries care of different people that inhabited the continent from Greeks to Renaissance and over, characterises uniquely the European cultural heritage. It sounds strange but it is this cultural wealth that causes problems that trouble the European Art. This paper will mainly focus on “built heritage” considering heritage as a path toward today culture. 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 the needs of exploit and manage it: the number of visitors to museums, historical monuments and archaeological sites, grows day by day. 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. 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 addressed to monument conservation and management. It will provide a general overview on different approaches world-wide and will consider in detail a set of projects that address these issues such as ICT tools developed by Monumentenwacht, SIRCoP, MMS and MIMS projects. The S.I.R.Co.P. (Scheduled Conservation Information System) was launched by Regione Lombardia in year 2000 within a research and training framework related to the ICR work on “Risk Map”. The general framework was derived as a follow up of the risk map and implementation of the basic idea of BAA (“environmental and architectural assets” archive) extensions in the field of scheduled maintenance. HyperMediaGroup was in charge, together with a team of experts, for the feasibility study and architecture definition of the Information System. The Information System acts as glue amongst different modules and activities foreseen archiving and managing information and data. One of the relevant issues is to revert the “extraordinary maintenance” trend toward “scheduled maintenance”. Unfortunately today many aspects are pushing “extraordinary maintenance” including both financial aspects, taxes and procedures, such a trend implies the lack of authenticity of historical artefacts and major costs. On the opposite S.I.R.Co.P. promotes scheduled maintenance and conservation according to a timetable and granularity proposed care of experts and the Information System itself. Starting from the upper level the Information System will collect and redistribute relevant information and case study. Locally it will offer flexible archiving tools and later on it will operate as historical information source useful in order to evaluate the consistence of historical buildings patrimony and keep track of changes and provide support to managers. This will specifically support both political and technical decisions providing priorities and possible pathologies on the basis of technical data base. SIRCoP - Information System - starting from the upper level the Information System will collect and redistribute relevant information and case study. Locally it will offer flexible archiving tools and later on it will operate as historical information source useful in order to evaluate the consistence of historical buildings patrimony and keep track of changes and provide support to managers. In addition the long term data repository provides case study, statistical information and high quality content for educational purposes. This will specifically support both political and technical decisions providing priorities and possible pathologies on the basis of technical data base. On running conditions all relevant architectural heritage of Regione Lombardia will be adequately stored within the S.I.R.Co.P. data base. But a truly integrated and modular approach was included in the parallel project called Monuments Information System (MIMS kernel). The idea of MIMS is dated 1997 but after several steps of feasibility study we are now in a position to launch the operational project. MIMS is a comprehensive solution ranging between data acquisition on the field and monument and site exploitation passing through conservation and management. A relevant module of MIMS application is addressed to provide technical information and case study for educational purposes.