When heritage buildings talk (I)

by Pedro Martín Lerones | Nov 10, 2016 | CARTIF Blog, Construction and Heritage

Let me remind you that Europe features the most diverse, rich and numerous cultural heritage around the world. 609 million tourists visited the “old continent” by 2015 (29 million in 2014) according to the World Tourism Organization, and, although it is somewhat pretentious, it is suggested that 37% of these tourists are cultural tourists, a figure that grows by 15% each year. This “curious specie” wanders around the cities getting the urgent need to visit the built heritage and being actively involved in cultural events.

I agree on speaking about cultural heritage as a touristic resource is disappointing when heritage is properly identified as integrator item and a completely intangible social identifier, but also certainly is an economic resource and just making cash its sustainability is ensured. This is the way to fix and create thousands of jobs, which in turn reinforce the character of social backbone that heritage is by itself, even allowing to improve the citizens’ quality of life.

Because of this the public sector comes boosting the creation of more and more cultural attractions with the built heritage as backdrop. Cultural tourism is perceived as the main source for funding heritage preservation: tourists generate the resources needed for maintenance and restoration. Let’s see if this is really so in the coming years, since the Richards report, ensures there is a much higher offer than real demand right now.

Making sure the protection and the preservation of our built heritage is, today, more urgent than ever. Not only as “prey” of cultural tourism, and not only as a brand of territory (including citizens), but because of their vulnerability to pollution, climate change and socio-economic pressures. We all get sick from time to time and we know it is always better to prevent than cure. The same happens to the built heritage: it is as much desirable as important to have automated systems that continuously tell us how the built heritage is, preventing “ills” just before they are such as expensive as irreparable. It is somewhat comparable to doctor’s auscultation, but what do we need listening to? In the technical jargon we say “monitoring” and many types of sensors are used to, but three aspects are mainly registered:

• The temperature and relative humidity. Both are always linked (in fact they are inverse). Any kind of heritage building has greater or lesser water content in the air at a given temperature, having a decisive influence on the physical-chemical stability of the materials they are made of. Inadequate conditions of temperature and humidity produce deformation and rupture; rust and corrosion; as well as bio-deterioration (emergence of organisms).
• Natural and artificial lighting. the Sun, or electric sources are electromagnetic radiation mainly covering the ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS) and infrared (IR) ranges. Together they cause photo-degradation (discoloration) and temperature increases, especially in the case of organic materials (paintings, textiles, books and documents).
• Pollutants. The air composition and quality are altered by compounds that mostly come from the use of fossil fuels (road traffic, heating of buildings and industrial activities). These compounds are able to make chemical reactions that affect the materials causing corrosion; spots and coatings; and also bio-deterioration.

These parameters will be particularly broken in subsequent posts.

In any case, the role of technological centres as CARTIF is decisive to take step forward in the technical developments required so that monitoring can be done affordably and fully compatible with the aesthetics and functionality of the building. Relevant international projects on this regard where CARTIF is playing a major role are:

• INSITER
• INCEPTION
• SHCITY

After Italy and recently China, Spain is the country that holds the largest number of human heritage sites. We are also a first order world tourist destination, with a yearly increasing cultural component. Playing at home, Castilla y León accounts for 60% of the Spanish heritage… Do we take the fingers out?

The importance of the RTD applied to cultural heritage

by Pedro Martín Lerones | Mar 3, 2016 | CARTIF Blog, Construction and Heritage

Have you ever thought on the importance of the monuments close to you?. Do you happen to know they really are a source of employment and local development?. Here you are a few lines to explain it, and also to make you understand how the applied RTD is effectively contributing to the study, protection, conservation, refurbishment and reuse of cultural heritage.

Since 1999, with the Florence Conference, and later with the World Bank and the UNESCO reports, cultural heritage is considered a rightful source of socio-economic development for the countries. It is really a form of capital that the economist David Throsby noted as ‘cultural capital’, i.e. an asset with specific key features (the economic value is added to the cultural value -primordial, symbolic, intangible-).

Europe is the region that counts with the most important and the richest cultural heritage all over the world. This contributes to attract millions of tourists every year. Obviously it helps to create jobs and enhances the quality of life of European citizens while reinforcing a common shared identity.

The European Union Treaty (Article 167) specifies that safeguarding cultural heritage (moveable and immoveable) must be treated as a priority for the EU and is the legal basis for protection initiatives including research on cultural heritage. Besides, UNESCO expressly states that “the protection of cultural heritage, as an expression of living culture, contributes to the development of societies and the building of peace”.

The protection and preservation of important monuments and sites is more pressing than ever as cultural heritage is exposed to pollution, climate change and socio-economic pressures. According to specialists in the field, the activities oriented to ensure the sustainability of heritage are proving to have a major impact boosting the local economy and attracting foreign capital (because of related cultural tourism).

The following figures emerging from the EVoCH Platform within CARTIF is a founding member, will take you on the way of we are talking about:

The recognition of the importance of the mentioned aspects leads cultural heritage to be considered into specific RTD proposals in the current EU Research and Innovation programme (Horizon 2020). In fact, since 1986 the EU has been supporting research for the preservation of tangible cultural heritage to develop ‘state of the art’ methodologies, tools and products.

During the last years, a few successful results of technology transfer are giving evidence that the most effective and practical way of supporting and developing innovative services, is a collaboration between applied research organizations and enterprises to make these fit ICT tools into their daily work. In CARTIF, we have been working in this field more than 15 years. Some of our projects, INCEPTION, COST Action i2MHB, SHBUILDINGS, RENERPATH or 3D Virtual Restoration of Historical Paintings, have developed the most innovative technologies.

This means that new technological solutions are really the basis to meet actual demands on the five internationally recognised levels of intervention on cultural heritage: study, protection, conservation, restoration and dissemination. Only in this way, reliable, fast, easy-to-use and affordable tools will be available to shift the very traditional procedures of those levels to the 21st century we are living in.

Consequently stable and high-quality associated skilled jobs will be created, directly related to an intrinsic and non-transferable resource such cultural heritage is by itself.