Smart cities and cultural heritage

The number of natural disasters is growing. A considerable number of them derives directly from climate changes and generates a deep impact on cultural heritages. As a result, the need for solutions able to cope with uncertain weather conditions and increased natural disasters is getting urgent. STORM is a European Research and Innovation Action co-funded in the H2020 framework that is aimed at creating intelligent tools which will gather data from libraries, sensors and crowd-sensing techniques in order to enable cultural heritage stakeholders (e.g., the organisations which have to manage the sites) to implement the most appropriate actions in the prevention, response and recovery phases of emergencies which could impact on cultural heritages. More specifically, the project aims at addressing those risks deriving from climate change, which in the near future is going to worsen most of the present hazards, as flash floods, heat waves and forest fires. As such, the approach adopted by the project is particularly fit for the purpose of being integrated with smart city systems which are increasingly growing in number and variety. Even if safety issues are not considered central in the overall concept of smart city, it's plain that the huge quantity of data that can be gathered and processed in any future STORM-like urban cultural heritage compound should feed into the available smart city systems. On the other way round, the mass of data produced or processed by smart city systems have the potential to impact dramatically on emergency management and prevention activities to be implemented by cultural heritage stakeholders. The paper will illustrate the approach that the STORM project is adopting to mitigate the impact of climate changes on cultural heritages and the mutual benefits which could derive from an integration of the STORM outcomes with smart cities systems through the use of standard emergency data exchange protocols and an integrated framework aimed at improving existing processes related to the three identified areas: Prevention, Response and Policy.