Road Infrastructure and Cultural Heritage: Surveys, Structural Health Monitoring, Economics Aspects and Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

Cultural, social and economic territorial development is strictly connected with Cultural and Infrastructure Heritage.

Italy has the world's most extensive cultural heritage, comprising museums, churches, archaeological areas, bridges, and historical houses. However, it is very frequently subject to important external loads (such as telluric movements, landslides...) that constantly endanger this immense patrimony. Early detection of damage and accurate assessment of structural safety requires innovative monitoring systems from different disciplinary sectors.

Regarding continuous health infrastructure monitoring, SHM (Structural Health Monitoring) systems are particularly relevant. They allow better and more efficient maintenance, efficiently reporting the conditions that can lead to a collapse.

Maintenance monitoring interventions are essential to ensure the use of these systems. To date, different methodologies and techniques are used to prevent possible damage, organizing preventive maintenance that reduces the costs of the interventions to be carried out if the structure undergoes extreme load action or ageing degradation mechanisms, which affect the life of art objects through time.

The analysis of the structural properties is particularly relevant when the structure is subjected to extreme events or repeated loads, since they affect the structural integrity and put the users at risk.

The relation between the structure behaviour and preventive conservation interventions is very important, in view of foreseeable future scenarios due to climate change.

Heritage management and preservation policies, therefore, require sustainable approaches and strategies that allow for the acceleration of regional development, production, and access to new products, processes, and services with an emphasis on preservation.

This Special Issue aims to collect original research articles and reviews on innovative research dedicated to methodologies, applications and case studies on management and preservation of cultural heritage, and for monitoring/analysis/structural interventions.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Structural health monitoring.
• The advances in non-destructive techniques for cultural heritage object analysis.
• The monitoring of climate conditions in cultural heritage sites, and their consequences for material ageing and degradation.
• Damages detection and localization methods for structures.
• Data Sensing and processing in structural health monitoring.
• Safety diagnosis and assessment of structures.
• Interdisciplinary approaches and applications for structural health monitoring.
• Financial sustainability and budgetary logic in heritage management.
• Innovative museum, industrial heritage, underwater heritage, and all other types of heritage management.
• Sustainable heritage tourism and regional development.
• Impact of digital technologies on cultural heritage management and valorization.
• Integration of remote sensing and GIS for cultural heritage assessment.
• From Dense Cloud to HBIM.
• UAV Survey.
• AR/VR/MR for Cultural Heritage and infrastructure monitoring and analysis.
• Climate change impacts on cultural heritage.
• Sustainable methods and tools for cultural heritage assessment and conservation.
• Monitoring of environmental conditions and prevention of degradation for minimum intervention.
• Non-invasive / micro-invasive techniques and methods for diagnostic in heritage conservation.

Dr. Vincenzo Barrile
Dr. Antonino Fotia
Guest Editors

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