STORM (Safeguarding Cultural Heritage through the Technical and Organizational Resources Management) is a project funded by the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 framework (no. 700191), under the Programme Security, Call DRS-11-2015: Disaster Resilience & Climate Change.
It has the purpose of studying and developing models and technologies to improve the resilience of cultural heritage relating to the effects of climate change and to manage, through innovative technologies and methodologies, emergencies that may arise from environmental disasters.
It is important to note that in this Call two projects only have been financed of over forty presented.
STORM project will extend over three years (2016-2019) and involves twenty partners from seven different European countries (Italy, Greece, Portugal, UK, Austria, Germany, Turkey).
In addition to Mibact (through the Special Office for the Colosseum, the Roman National Museum and the Archaeological Area of Rome), the Italian public partners are the Ministry of Interior (through the National Fire Brigade) and the Tuscia University. Then two industrial companies: Engineering (coordinator) and Resiltech.
At the international level two other Ministries are involved: the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Portuguese Ministry of Cultural Heritages.
Participate in STORM also other public educational and research institutions: TEIP (Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus) and FORTH research centre for Greece; Bogazici University in Turkey, Stuttgart University in Germany; Institute for New Technologies in Portugal; Salford University in the United Kingdom and the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Austria.
The project involvesalso some excellences among European PMIs: Sparta Digital and Kpeople in the UK; Nova Conservação in Portugal.
STORM project will propose an innovative approach to preserving cultural heritage and European environment, in particular by mitigating the harmful impacts caused by climate change in recent decades.
The project will develop new methods for monitoring climate change and for predicting adverse events that could damage the cultural heritage. It will also develop new technologies (in particular new-generation sensors), which – together with new collaboration tools to link agencies, research institutes and companies – will be made available to the members of the communities interested in this kind of issues (public administrations, researchers, restorers, emergency operators, people responsible of governance strategies, etc.).
Collaboration tools will allow the collection of all relevant information to monitor in real-time the effects of the events on the monuments and at the same time to better plan interventions to be carried out by each institution in charge.
Methodologies and tools developed in the project will be tested in five different sites selected in five countries, each with different characteristics and peculiarities in terms of possible risks:
- Troy in Portugal, a coastal site of the Roman period (http://troiaresort.pt/en/ruinas-romanas/.
- The historical centre of Rethymno (http://www.rethymno.gr/en/city/archeological-area/archaeological-sites.html in Greece.
- The Mellor site (http://www.mellorarchaeology.org.uk/ in the United Kingdom.
- The imposing ruins of Ephesus in Turkey.
- In Italy, pilot site of the project will be the Diocletian Baths (http://archeoroma.beniculturali.it/musei/museo-nazionale-romano-terme-diocleziano: because of their magnificence and historical significance, as well for many conservative issues that affect them, they will allow to experience at the best results that will be released by STORM.
Two Associated Partners will also be involved: Pompeii site (http://www.pompeiisites.org/), that will experiment some of the project solutions, and ICCROM (http://www.iccrom.org/it/) that deals worldwide with training and cultural heritage restoration.
