Understanding the state of conservation of historic city centers to better manage problems related to natural risks and climate change: this is the goal of ARCH, a project funded by the European Community which began in June 2019 and involves four pilot cities, including Camerino . We talked about it with Maria Fabrizia Buongiorno manager of INGV who coordinates the project together with Antonio Costanzo, INGV researcher expert in environmental engineering. Fabrizia has been working for years on programs related to remote sensing activities for various applications, both in the volcanological field and in the field of environmental cultural heritage, but not only: she also deals with Space, often collaborating with the Italian Space Agency and NASA at the study of new missions.
What is the goal of the ARCH Project?
ARCH, acronym of Advancing Resilience of historic areas against climate-related and other hazards” is a Horizon 2020 project whose objectives are to preserve the cultural heritage of historic areas from the risks deriving from natural disasters, such as earthquakes and climate change. Funded by the European Community, ARCH concerns the use of advanced techniques to increase the resilience of historic centres, is coordinated by the German Fraunhofer institute and also sees the presence of Italian entities such as INGV and ENEA.
Which city centers are involved in the project?
The cities that have joined are Camerino in Italy, Valencia in Spain, Hamburg in Germany and Bratislava in Slovakia. These centers have indicated, within their own municipalities, which areas are to be monitored and the type of risks to which they are exposed.
What role does INGV play within ARCH?
The task of INGV within ARCH is fundamental and consists of two main objectives. The first concerns the creation of a common database for the entire project, using the experience gained within the PON Massimo Project created for the Calabria Region and with the aim of improving knowledge on the cultural heritage exposed to seismic risk. The database developed by INGV integrated architectural information and measurements in real time, thanks to the installation of seismometers in the buildings indicated by the project itself. In ARCH, INGV will be responsible for the project database by interacting with the cities involved to acquire the data already available in the computer systems by integrating new information made available by the project partners. The second contribution by INGV concerns, however, the development of systems advanced for seismological analysis and monitoring. This aspect will affect the city of Camerino thanks to the work of the engineer Antonio Costanzo, scientific coordinator of the project for INGV and the researcher Antonino D'Alessandro, developer of very small sensors for detecting the accelerations of seismic events that will be installed in the buildings indicated by the Municipality of Camerino to acquire information on the stability of the structures and their response to seismic stress. This information will be able to support both the monitoring and the reconstruction of the area, heavily damaged by the 2016 - 2017 earthquake. INGV also intervenes in both satellite and aerial remote sensing also through the use of drones in order to collect images with different sensors on urban centers indicated by ARCH.
What are the issues that will be addressed in the areas participating in the program?
The problems are different and, in some cases, linked to the construction characteristics of the centres.
In Valencia, for example, we will focus on data obtained from remote sensing as it is an area affected by strong heat waves. We will then take temperature measurements through satellites and airplanes. The objective is to map the agricultural areas historically within the urban area and which can mitigate the effects of heat waves on Valencia itself and, above all, support the Community's actions aimed at halting the strong urban development is engulfing the green areas of the city, called “huertas”. It must be considered that in this place there are areas historically irrigated thanks to canalizations carried out over a thousand years ago by the Arabs which represent a cultural and landscape heritage of the city of Valencia. It will therefore be necessary to analyze all these ancient hydrographic networks and evaluate the climatic effects also through space technologies.
In Hamburg, on the other hand, there is a problem of erosion due to the tides, significantly increased both due to climate change and due to the widening of the canals which, from the port of Hamburg, go towards the city built, in some areas, on wooden poles which are undergoing considerable deterioration due to the impact of the tides. There we will intervene through analyzes carried out using satellite sensors that allow the detection of ground deformations made up of microwave sensors called SAR, made available by the European and Italian Space Agency.
The project has many aspects and will involve the various partners who on the one hand will offer technologies and on the other will have to understand how to integrate them into the already operational systems of the cities, so as to be used easily by the end users and above all to foresee their continuity even after the end of the project and therefore carry out a real technology transfer. In the last meeting which was recently held in Brussels, for example, colleagues from the city of Bratislava requested that the interfaces be in the Slovak language, in order to be understandable by the municipal operators who will adopt them.
Speaking of Camerino, how can sensors and remote sensing actually be effective for the protection of the historic centre?
Camerino has a medieval historic center made up of various structures and it is important to understand what happened and what is happening with regard to the damage caused by the last seismic event. Precisely in order to investigate the state of damage of a building, accelerometers can be installed, sensors that record, in the event of an event, the rapid movement of the structures on which they are placed. This measurement is used to understand on the one hand what the response of the building under analysis was, on the other it allows us to have data to understand which measures to implement to strengthen the building and to understand if a previously suffered damage increases the risk of collapse. Remote sensing instruments, on the other hand, allow us to have an extremely refined image of the historic centre, providing various details. In these cases, the survey is entrusted to airplanes and drones, which allows for three-dimensional reconstructions of the various buildings. The collected images allow you to clearly see the actual changes that have occurred following an event, such as a collapse. Satellite surveying is naturally not able to give us this type of detailed information, however it can give us two very important indications: the first, thanks to the use of particular sensors, can tell us if movements and deformations have occurred, i.e. how much the buildings changed after the earthquake, also through repeated measurements over time; the second allows instead to understand the thermal variations due to climate change, as in the case of the city of Valencia. This information, integrated with that of the proximal surveys, will provide us with a complete vision of the situation, in order to be able to support the mitigation actions of local administrations.
This project has just started and will last three years. What are your expectations about it?
Definitely make INGV's scientific and technological knowledge available both in the seismological sector and for space technologies. Then increase the collaboration and comparison with large European and Italian research institutions by enhancing and increasing our knowledge and interacting with the end users who will have to use the project products, such as scientific and technological results also through the IT platform built by INGV which will allow access to information. This project will also allow for greater involvement of the INGV Cultural Heritage Laboratory at the Cosenza - UNICAL headquarters, where highly qualified personnel work both for IT development and for scientific and technical analyzes dedicated to cultural heritage.