Project facts

Duration: 2020-04-01 - 2025-03-31
Project coordinator: ETHNICON METSOVION POLYTECHNION
Project consortium: Ethnicon Metsovion Polytechnion (GR), UAB Meltis Baltic (LT), Resilience Guard GMBH (CH), Environmental Reliablilty and Risk Analysis (GR), Geomatics (Cyprus) Limited (CY), Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis (GR), Technologiko Panepistimio Kyprou (CY), Red SPA (IT), Politecnico di Milano (IT), Ilmatieteen Laitos (FI)
Funding bodies: H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions H2020-EU.1.3.3. - Stimulating innovation by means of cross-fertilisation of knowledge
Subject areas: Changing environments, Climate Change, Heritage Management, Sustainability
Contact: Pr. Anastasios Doulamis (adoulam@cs.ntua.gr)
Budget: € 1 909 000

Presentation

Recent studies highlight the potential impact of Climate Change (CC) and geo-hazards (such as landslides and earthquakes) on historic areas hosting Cultural Heritage (CH) sites and monuments, which in turn yield significant adverse impacts on economies, politics and societies. The deterioration of CH sites is one of the biggest challenges in conservation; aspects such as building technologies/materials, preventive measures and restoration strategies, resilience and adaptation methodologies must be considered. Up today there is no specific process towards understanding and quantifying CC effects on historic areas; combined with the limited strategies on CC-related issues, it becomes difficult to assess quantitatively and qualitatively the impact of various climatic and other parameters on the CH sites. These issues form an integral part of the necessary support that should be provided to governmental bodies and cultural authorities. to properly adapt their policies, in the short and long term, towards deploying sustainable mitigation plans and providing efficient reconstruction of the CH parts that have been damaged. Finally, the absence of communities’ participatory approaches to the overall planning of the historic areas is a main challenge to tackle.

Impacts & Results

The YADES’ network aims to use proper modelling tools and methods, innovative technologies(terrestrial and satellite imaging for wide-area inspection, advanced machine learning techniques, etc.) to deliver an integrated platform for resilience assessment of CH areas, addressing multi-hazard riskunderstanding, better preparedness, faster, adapted and efficient response, and sustainable reconstruction of historic areas. YADES will take into account the local ecosystems in the areas ofinterest, mapping out their interactions and follow a truly sustainable reconstruction approach attechnical, social, institutional, environmental and economic levels. To this end, it will incorporate activecommunities participation, support new business models based on the concept of a “load-balancing”economy, (using an algorithm that acts like a “reverse proxy”, distributing client traffic across differentcompanies within the same sector) and offer financial risk-transfer tools(parametric insurance, Catastrophe-CAT-bonds) that can ensure the immediate funds’ availability to fuel timely build-back-better efforts.