HEritage Resilience Against CLimate Events on Site (HERACLES)

HERACLES main objective is to design, validate and promote responsive systems/solutions for effective resilience of Cultural Heritage (CH) against climate change effects, considering as a mandatory premise a holistic and multidisciplinary approach through the involvement of different expertise (end-users, industry/SMEs, scientists, conservators/restorators and social experts, decision, and policy makers). This is operationally pursued with the development of a system exploiting an ICT platform able to collect and integrate multisource information in order to effectively provide complete and updated situational awareness and decision support for innovative measurements improving CH resilience, including new solutions for maintenance and conservation. The HERACLES effectiveness is ensured by the design and validation of manageable methodologies also for the definition of operational procedures and guidelines for risk mitigation and management. It is validated in two challenging test beds, key study cases for the climate change impact on European CH assets.

The strength of HERACLES solutions is their flexibility in evaluating a big quantity of different information that can be changed and tailored to the specific CH assets needs, guaranteeing in that way a general applicability. In this context, a fundamental role is played by end-users, which are an active part in the project activities. The HERACLES system is designed and developed by accounting for the economic sustainability and future acceptance by the market, and for the social and economic impact for public and local communities, while respecting the integrity of CH and the value it holds for communities. Effective technological transfer of HERACLES outcomes to large companies, SMEs and end users, suitable dissemination, communication, education and training activities are also organized to disseminate vision and progresses obtained to different communities, in a vision of wide audiences awareness.