From monitoring to conservation: with an app, protection becomes interactive. It is the innovative continuous monitoring solution designed by the archaeological site of Pompeii to face the greatest challenge: "that of the conservation of the ancient city and which makes protection a collective mission".
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Due to its size and fragility, maintaining the ancient city of Pompeii requires a huge commitment: in this, the archaeological site is comparable to other complex sites, with a heritage spread over a vast area, such as Petra (Jordan) or Angkor (Cambodia). Unlike more limited monuments, such as a palace or a castle, whose monitoring is relatively simple, a crucial problem of complex sites is the knowledge of their state of conservation.
The city of Pompeii, excavated starting in 1748, today consists of over a thousand homes, buried in 79 AD by the eruption of Vesuvius and composed of 13 thousand rooms, of which only 5% have a roof that protects them from atmospheric agents. A vastness that cannot be managed with traditional tools. For this reason, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, as a peripheral institute of the Ministry of Culture, has developed an app within the digital ecosystem "Open Pompeii", where all the data relating to the state of conservation of the site converge - data that are essential for planning maintenance and restoration interventions.
The monitoring web app
The web app, accessible from PC, tablet and smartphone, was developed together with the Visivalab company and the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Salerno, making the most of other experiences that at first glance may seem strange but that have been of great teaching, such as the monitoring of highways, bridges and other infrastructures.
Currently, a multidisciplinary group of archaeologists, architects, restorers and engineers is engaged in the thorough mapping of all the construction elements and their state of conservation: floors, walls, attics, roofs, plaster, decorative apparatus, furnishings and so on. The app also allows to obtain an initial estimate of the costs to intervene where an emergency is detected.
Interaction in monitoring
But that's not all: the same app, designed for continuously updated monitoring, also allows all the Park's workers - from security personnel to the director - to interact and report critical issues.
"Digital helps us to make protection a participatory and interactive activity, so we connect the many 'islands of knowledge', that is, the information that someone had, for example because they saw a potential problem such as a wall crest covered in invasive vegetation, but which did not reach those who should intervene,” explain the technicians of the Archaeological Park.
“To address the many risks to heritage, scheduled maintenance is essential: it means intervening in situations of degradation before irreparable damage is created,” emphasizes Professor Luigi Petti of the University of Salerno, co-developer of the innovative methodological approach. “But to do so, it is necessary to have a complete and updated picture of the site. Without systematic and periodic monitoring, there can be no effective maintenance, and maintenance is the key to success if we consider that every Euro spent on maintenance produces a saving of tens of Euros in the coming decades.”
Planning of interventions
In order to be able to react flexibly to the reports that have been collected in the “Open Pompeii” app, the Archaeological Park entrusts part of the interventions to be carried out through a 'framework agreement' to external operators. This implies that the extent of the interventions to be carried out in the coming years is established, without determining in advance where exactly the intervention will take place, since this will be decided on the basis of continuous monitoring of the heritage. The monitoring and maintenance project in the framework agreement was financed with Cohesion funds from the Italian Government for a total amount of 12 million euros.
Article published on 20 December 2024 - 11:03
The idea of using an app to monitor Pompeii is interesting but there are many aspects to consider. Technology can help but we also need to train the people who work in the park to use it well and make correct interventions.