M.A.C.IN.A. - Multilevel Application for Cultural INformation Archives. A focus on the Inner Areas of Abruzzo and Sardinia regions

Shared participation in the knowledge of cultural heritage, including the natural and built landscape, is a multifaceted and particularly topical issue that needs to be broached to understand, communicate, preserve and transmit to future generations our cultural heritage in its material and immaterial expressions. To achieve the cultural heritage knowledge need is necessary to document heritage through the integration of several methods and disciplines that, when supported by the latest digital technologies, generate a wide range of heterogeneous information that needs to be semantically organised and subsequently suitably analysed and interpreted, in order to direct specific planning, protection, conservation, promotion and enhancement processes. The task of this project is to acquire data and digitally record the artefacts that man has built around watercourses, either to cross them or to use their power for productive purposes or to protect himself from hydrogeological events. These artefacts, such as mills, infrastructures and canalisations, mirror particular types of anthropisation and are closely linked to their original context.

Appropriate processes, widely tested by the international scientific community, aiming to fulfil digital representation of geospatial data in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and architectural data in Building Information Modelling (BIM) will be carried out to deepen heritage knowledge. These processes, conducted with a particular focus on the diachronic reading of historical landscape transformations (Heritage/Historical GIS) and those of the built heritage (Heritage/Historical BIM), integrated with data from the analysis of hydrogeological and hydroclimatic time series, will serve to develop a tool particularly suited to the definition of complex cause-effect mechanisms for the areas analysed. The integration of the two processes is aimed at creating the basis for a Heritage/Historical Landscape Information Modelling (HLIM), an aim closely linked to the management of big data but also to the intention of defining an open, versatile and accessible tool for several professionals involved in cultural and natural heritage tasks. In the same way, starting from the HLIM developed, a series of outputs aimed at deepening communication and heritage education will be defined to ensure site resilience and related sustainability following the involvement of civil society. 

Finally, the trans-disciplinary approach guaranteed by the expertise of the involved research teams will be able to approach the issue of the human-landscape relationship from a multi-objective perspective, thanks to participatory processes geared towards the development and sustainable conservation of marginal and not well knows territories. The study case will be the territory of the inner areas of Abruzzo and Sardinia regions by selecting some artefacts and analysing them in relation to their natural contexts.

Research units

• Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Principal Investigator Ilaria Trizio
• Università degli Studi di Sassari, Associated Investigator Michele Valentino
• Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Associated Investigator Silvia Fabbrocino

Call
PRIN 2022 PNRR

Project duration
24 months

Main ERC field
SH - Social Sciences and Humanities

ERC subfields

• SH5_8 Cultural studies, cultural identities and memories, cultural heritage
• SH5_12 Computational modelling and digitisation in the cultural sphere

Keywords

cultural and landscape heritage, water mills, digitization of the cultural heritage, multidisciplinary analysis, HGIS and HBIM integration, cultural heritage education