Innovative Geospatial and Engineering Solutions for Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Cultural heritage is facing increasing vulnerability due to various threats, including natural disasters, human activities, and the escalating impacts of climate change. This study examines how geospatial technologies and engi-neering solutions can address these issues, emphasizing their potential to improve monitoring, protection, and preservation practices for cultural heritage sites. Ad-vanced geospatial technologies, such as non-contact geomatics sensors and struc-tural analysis techniques, offer further capabilities for heritage monitoring. These tools enable the development of early warning systems to proactively identify and mitigate risks to monuments before significant damage occurs. Such systems support timely interventions, reducing restoration costs and safeguarding the in-tegrity of heritage assets. By integrating advanced technologies with field-spe-cific requirements, this study provides an overview of effective resource alloca-tion. This paper highlights the objectives of two recently supported European and national ongoing projects of the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), namely the “Geomatics and Civil Engineering Innovative Research on Heritage”, in short ENGINEER and the “Research and Innovation Knowledge Centre for Engineering in Heritage”, in short CONNECTING. Both projects’ tasks aim to fill research multidisciplinary gaps, push, and extend knowledge into new and innovative fields dealing with the monitoring, digitization, visualization, and preservation of heritage monuments and cultural heritage sites, assisting their protection, promotion, and safeguarding with the contribution research activities through coordination and support actions as well as through targeted research activities with the support of European leading institutions.