Research objetives

Architectural heritage reflects the history of cultures occupying the space for centuries or thousands of years. CHARM project focuses on sustainable conservation of architectural heritage, including buildings surroundings, from vernacular architecture to monuments and from archaeological sites to modern buildings. Materials and methods for the conservation of Architectural Heritage (AH) have evolved in the last years and continue to do so, in order to propose solutions respecting the environment and the health of people restoring, occupying or working in the buildings. In the past, cultural heritage conservation professionals have employed materials and techniques based on their own experience and traditional knowledge transmission, founded on the behaviour of materials in past climate. Environmental and climate conditions have very fast evolved in the last few years and will continue to change, so previously employed procedures, in many cases, are no longer adequate. Environmental sensitivity of society is fast developing and existing conservation procedures will not always fulfil new environmental legislation and population and decision makers' wills. For all these reasons, new conservation solutions must be proposed responding to the new climate conditions and also to socio-economical society requirements. Future researchers and professionals in conservation of AH must possess strong skills on their discipline but also a general knowledge on the field of sustainable cultural heritage conservation. CHARM addresses the risk encountered by AH due to climate and environmental changes and the impact that AH conservation has on global change. Artificial Intelligence is extensively employed in many research fields but not in AH conservation. CHARM contributes to introducing the use of AI to improve sustainable conservation strategies for architectural heritage sites by an international, interdisciplinary and multi sectoral approach. CHARM contributes not only to cultural heritage conservation but also to the EU 2050 climate neutral objective.