Geomatics and management of at-risk cultural heritage

The paper starts off by defining cultural heritage and how the concept has extended over time. Then, after attesting to the fragility of our heritage, it continues with the awareness of the need to enable its transmission to posterity. It pinpoints a change in the philosophy of preservation practices, with the preference of prevention over intervention. Then it goes on to define the contribution of geomatics to knowledge, seen as a prerequisite to any decision-making, and to outline the models produced by the techniques classified as part of geomatics: discrete and continuous models, with different balances between the accuracy and efficacy of the descriptions. Some considerations follow on the geomatics tools and techniques now available to document the cultural heritage, with particular reference to the possibility of recording high-resolution data and integrating information from different sensors. The problems presented are illustrated with some examples of applications and the paper concludes by identifying some current research topics.