CHEAP GSHPS
To reduce the total cost of low enthalpy geothermal systems by 20-30%, to save energy, to decrease the CO2 emissions, to reduce dependence on intrusive HVAC systems and finally contributing to climate change mitigation policies, the Cheap GSHPs project will improve actual drilling/installation technologies and designs of Ground Source Heat Exchangers (GSHEs). This will be combined with an holistic approach for optimum selection, design and implementation of complete systems across different undergroundand climate conditions. The proposal will focus on one hand on the development of more efficient and safe shallow geothermal systems and the reduction of the installation costs in civil and Historical buildings and districts. This will be realized by improving drastically installation technology and by developing new ones. A decision support (DSS) will be developed with other design tools covering the geological aspects, feasibility and economic evaluations based on different plantset-up options, selection, design, installation, commissioning and operation of low enthalpy geothermal systems.
CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES
The CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project is about the participation of citizens in research on cultural heritage and humanities. ICT are powerful drivers of creativity, but specific technical know-how is still generally lacking in the creative industries sectors. In addition, humanities scholarship is not yet taking full advantage of ICT to engage with wider audiences. New skills are needed to enable the cultural sector to grasp employment and commercial opportunities. The project aims to develop and validate a Roadmap for the use of e-Infrastructures to support the participation of European citizens in research on cultural heritage and digital humanities. Critically, the Roadmap will offer support for improved social cohesion arising from the sharing of knowledge and understanding of Europe’s citizens common and individual cultures.
COURAGE
COURAGE (“Cultural Opposition –Understanding the CultuRal HeritAGE of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries”) project will create the first digital database of both online and offline private and public collections in Europe which testify to the survival of various forms of cultural opposition in the former socialist countries; these collections cover a period from the rise of communist regimes in the region to the fall of the Iron Curtain. COURAGE will further a more nuanced understanding of how these collections work, what functions they serve in their respective societies, and how they represent their holdings and findings to the national and international public. The general aim of this analysis is to allow for the expanded outreach and increased impact of the collections by assessing the historical origins and legacies of various forms of cultural opposition.
CULTURAL BASE
Cultural Base – Social Platform on Cultural Heritage and European Identities is a social platform funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme 2014-2015 “Europe in a changing world: inclusive, innovative and reflective societies”. Cultural Base aims to address the topic of Heritage and European Identities from a double standpoint, namely, an analytical as well as a public policy perspective. It all began with the idea that since the second half of the last century, culture has experienced a profound mutation, through which its position and role in the social dynamics have been transformed. Culture now constitutes an essential basis of today’s society in a context of cultural digitization and globalization. The transformation of the entire cultural ecosystem has radically altered – and at the same time, intensified – the relationship between cultural identity, cultural heritage and cultural expression. This transformation has occurred both at the level of the professional cultural sector as well as in society as a whole. As a Social Platform, Cultural Base aims at exploring the new challenges and the new potential of culture, where three pillars – cultural identity, cultural heritage and cultural expression – intertwine combining the knowledge stemming from academic and non-academic worlds. The work of the Cultural Base platform will be conducted along three main axes: 1) Cultural memory, 2) Cultural inclusion, and 3) Cultural creativity.
ENDOW
EnDOW (Enhancing access to 20th Century cultural heritage through Distributed Orphan Works clearance) is a 3-years collaborative project funded under Heritage Plus, a programme launched by agencies of 18 European countries and the European Commission as part of the Joint Programming Initiative in Cultural Heritage and Global Change. The project designs a cost effective de-centralized system that enables cultural institutions across Europe to determine the “orphan work” status of their collections, according to the requirements of the recently implemented European Directive on orphan works. The ultimate aim of EnDOW and its crowdsourcing platform is to enable use and re-use of items that would otherwise remain scarcely known and certainly unexploited, and so to allow for an enhanced access to 20th Century cultural heritage.
EUROPEANA SPACE
Europeana Space aims to increase and enhance the creative industries’ use of digital cultural content and Europeana by delivering a range of resources to support their engagement. The use of content is still limited by factors including the issue of IPR status and the need for robust business models that demonstrate the potential for exploitation of available content. In addressing these problems, Europeana Space brings together high-level expertise from the European creative industries, technology-based enterprises, the cultural heritage sector and higher education. Europeana Space will create new opportunities for employment and economic growth within the creative industries based upon Europe’s rich digital cultural resources. It will provide an open environment for the development of applications and services based upon digital cultural content. The use of this environment will be fostered by a wide programme of promotion, dissemination and replication of the Best Practices developed within the project.
INCEPTION
INCEPTION solves the shortcomings of state-of-the-art 3D reconstruction by significantly enhancing the functionalities, capabilities and cost-effectiveness of instruments and deployment procedures for 3D laser survey, data acquisition and processing. It solves the accuracy and efficiency of 3D capturing by integrating Geospatial Information, Global and Indoor Positioning Systems (GIS, GPS, IPS) both through hardware interfaces as well as software algorithms. INCEPTION methods and tools will result in 3D models that are easily accessible for all user groups and interoperable for use by different hardware and software. It develops an open-standard Semantic Web platform for Building Information Models for Cultural Heritage (HBIM) to be implemented in user-friendly Augmented Reality (VR and AR) operable on mobile devices.
IDEA ASSOCIATION
IDEA is a non-profit organization born from EAGLE (Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy). The purpose of EAGLE (http://www.eagle-network.eu/) is to gather and catalogue more than 1.500.000 images and other digital objects related to hundreds of thousands of greek and roman inscriptions accompanied by basic information, often also in english and in other modern languages. All this can be found in a single and easy-to-search database. IDEA promotes the application of the most advanced methods and technologies to the work – research, study, enhancement, promotion – on the so called “written monuments” dating back to ancient ages, with the aim of expanding the knowledge about them from di erent viewpoints, either professional and specialistic or amateur and touristic.
INNOWEEE
The main objective of InnoWEE is ithe development of an optimized reuse of Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) materials producing high add value prefabricated insulating and radiating panels to be used in energy efficient buildings. The basic idea is to embed the waste from building demolition (fragmented bricks, fragmented plaster or concrete, fragmented glasses, machined wood from windows frame or from wood beams after demolition etc.) in a geopolymer matrix to produce prefabricated panels for different use.
MEMOLA
MEMOLA project is an interdisciplinary approach to cultural landscapes of Mediterranean mountainous areas, taking as a central axis the historical study of two natural resources essential to generate agro-systems: water and soil. The study focuses on four areas: Sierra Nevada (Spain), Monti di Trapani (Italy), Colli Euganei (Italy) and Vjosa Valley(Albania). Its main objectives are to investigate the logic that rules the process of historical landscapes formation in relation to natural resources within a diachronic framework, and to introduce the historical perspective (4th dimension) as a powerful interpretation key in landscape studies.
NANO-CATHEDRAL
The objective of Nano-Cathedral – Nanomaterials for conservation of European architectural heritage developed by research on characteristic lithotypes is to provide “key tools” for restoration and conservation. Five different cathedrals were selected as they may be considered as representative of both different exposure conditions and different types of stones. A general protocol will be defined for the identification of the petrographic and mineralogical features of the stone materials, the identification of the degradation patterns, the evaluation of the causes and mechanisms of alteration and degradation, including the correlations between the relevant state of decay and the actual microclimatic and air pollution conditions.
NANORESTART
The NANORESTART – NANOmaterials for the REStoration of works of ART project focuses on the synthesis of novel poly-functional nanomaterials and on the development of highly innovative restoration techniques to address the conservation of a wide variety of materials mainly used by modern and contemporary artists. In NANORESTART, enterprises and academic centers of excellence in the field of synthesis and characterization of nano- and advanced materials have joined forces with complementary conservation institutions and freelance restorers. This multidisciplinary approach will cover the development of different materials in response to real conservation needs, the testing of such materials, the assessment of their environmental impact, and their industrial scalability.
PHAIDRA
Phaidra is a comprehensive university digital asset management system with long-term archiving functions. Phaidra was developed at the University of Vienna, which the University of Padua is collaborating with since 2010. The Phaidra Digital collections website of the University of Padova Library System shows part of the atheneum cultural heritage – coming from archives, museums and libraries – allowing the vast public to enjoy rare and valuable documents, of substantial historical, artistic, cultural, academic interest, otherwise not easily accessible. Other partners are: the Universities Ca’ Foscari and IUAV, in Venice, the European project Linked Heritage and Europeana.
PREFORMA
PREFORMA is an EU-funded Pre-Commercial Procurement project working on one of the main challenges memory institutions are facing nowadays: the long-term preservation of digital data. The project develops three open source conformance checkers that control whether a file complies with standard specifications and with the acceptance criteria of the memory institution. They offer full control of the process of conformity testing of files to be created, migrated and ingested into archives. In addition, interoperability mechanisms allow the integration of the developed tools into the legacy systems of the memory institutions as well as their extension to new formats. The project seeks to establish a sustainable community that ensures long-term availability of the software, generates useful feedback for those who control it and advances improvement of the standard specifications.
PHOTOCONSORTIUM ASSOCIATION
PHOTOCONSORTIUM – International Consortium for Photographic Heritage is a non for profit association whose purpose is the promotion and enhancement of the culture of photography and the photographic heritage. To achieve its statutory goals, PHOTOCONSORTIUM aims to promote, organize and manage conferences, exhibitions, awards and training courses as well as to carry out publishing activities. The association participates, and promotes the participation of its members, in new projects and initiatives also in collaboration with third parties, including but not limited to participation in the Programmes of the European Commission. All the initiatives of the association are primarily devoted to serving the interests of its members.
READ
The Recognition and Enrichment of Archival Documents (READ) project is dedicated to making historical documents more accessible through the development and dissemination of Handwritten Text Recognition and other cutting-edge technologies. These technological innovations are made freely available through an expanding research infrastructure called Transkribus (https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/). This research has huge implications for the accessibility of the written records of human history. It allows archivists, researchers and members of the public to work with handwritten historical documents more easily, receiving automatic transcripts, conducting full-text searches and extracting information like person names and dates. READ is funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
ROCK
ROCK aims to develop an innovative, collaborative and circular systemic approach for regeneration and adaptive reuse of historic city centres. Implementing a repertoire of successful heritage-led regeneration initiatives, it will test the replicability of the spatial approach and of successful models addressing the specific needs of historic city centres, adopting a cross-disciplinary mentoring process. ROCK will deliver new ways to access and experience Cultural Heritage [CH] ensuring environmental sound solutions, city branding, bottom-up participation via living labs, while increasing liveability and safety in the involved areas. ICT tools will support the concrete application of the ROCK principles and the interoperable platform will enable new ways to collect and exchange data to facilitate networking and synergies. Main expected impacts deal with the achievement of effective and shared policies able to: accelerate heritage led regeneration, improve accessibility and social cohesion, increase awareness and participation in local decision making process and wider civic engagement, foster businesses and new employment opportunities.
SCAN4RECO
SCAN4RECO is a 3-year Research and Innovation Action (2015-2018) where 9 partners from 5 countries collaborate in developing ICT solutions for efficient restoration and prevention of degradation of cultural heritage objects. The Scan4Reco project aims to deliver a multi-modal and multi-discipline platform that would be able to non-destructively scan any cultural asset Scan4Reco introduces a novel and innovative approach for the scientific and wider community as it enables the processing of multi-sensorial input in such a way that produces a hierarchical, multi-layered and multidimensional complete model of the object of interest. In addition, Scan4Reco will combine the object of interest with inter-disciplinary knowledge derived from the web and specific relevant datasets while also provide it with an automatic inference of its forthcoming state/shape in the future. Both 3D models of the surface and underlying layers of the object will be produced thus allowing better insight into its condition, allowing in-scale and enlarged prints to be created. The 3D models will allow for simulation of expected degradation of materials in time using rules developed through speeded-up ageing.
STORM
STORM is a H2020 project which aims at undertaking the challenge of researching new ways to improve the resilience of cultural heritage against the effects of harsh climate events, thus mitigating their impact. STORM proposes a set of novel predictive models and improved non-invasive and non-destructive methods of survey and diagnosis, for effective prediction of environmental changes and for revealing threats and conditions that could damage cultural heritage sites. It will determine how different vulnerable materials, structures and buildings are affected by different extreme weather events together with risks associated to climatic conditions or natural hazards, offering improved, effective adaptation and mitigation strategies, systems and technologies. An integrated system featuring novel sensors, legacy systems, state of the art platforms, as well as crowdsourcing techniques will be implemented, offering applications and services over ad open cloud infrastructure. Results will be tested in relevant case studies in five different countries: Italy, Greece, UK, Portugal and Turkey.