Search results for "heritage"
showing 10 items of 1224 documents
Integrated geomorphological mapping in the north-western sector of Agrigento (Italy)
2012
The geomorphological map is an essential tool to perform a proper urban planning in mountainous or hilly areas. In this paper a multidisciplinary approach to derive a 1:2000 geomorphological map is described. The proposed methodology consists of the integration between aerial photographs, acquired in 2003, and four datasets of Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) measures to update a pre-existing landslide inventory. The integrated data were used to achieve a validated geomorphological map by means of a geomorphological survey. The study area is located in southern Italy (Agrigento, Sicily). The city of Agrigento, included in the World Heritage List of UNESCO in 1997, is located on the…
Managing palaeontological heritage: a brief overview of policy and practice in England
2019
Fossil collecting for scientific and educational reasons, as well as to support natural curiosity, has taken place in England since at least the late eighteenth century. It was not, however, until the late nineteenth, and particularly the mid-twentieth century, that site-based conservation of palaeontological heritage, and the management of collecting, was established. This paper provides a brief overview of the development of the policy and practice of palaeontological heritage management in England. It includes an outline of the establishment of national legislation, and a summary of the practical approaches to managing palaeontological sites and the collection of fossils that have been a…
A wearable multimodal interface for exploring urban points of interest
2015
Locating points of interest (POIs) in cities is typically facilitated by visual aids such as paper maps, brochures, and mobile applications. However, these techniques require visual attention, which ideally should be on the surroundings. Non-visual techniques for navigating towards specific POIs typically lack support for free exploration of the city or more detailed guidance. To overcome these issues, we propose a multimodal, wearable system for alerting the user of nearby recommended POIs. The system, built around a tactile glove, provides audio-tactile cues when a new POI is in the vicinity, and more detailed information and guidance if the user expresses interest in this POI. We evaluat…
Towards an Immersive and Accessible Virtual Reconstruction of Theaters from the Early Modern
2020
This paper reports on the work being done towards achieving an immersive and accessible reconstruction of Historical and Cultural Heritage, focusing on Theaters of the Early Modern as use case. In particular, the paper presents and discusses potential possibilities to enable: 1) the acoustical reconstruction of the virtual (lost) environments – beyond the graphical reconstruction for the buildings, elements and performances; 2) effective interaction features and navigation within the virtual environment (e.g. by means of adaptive interfaces, guiding methods, insertion of Point of Interest); and 3) accessible experiences, by means of an innovative and personalized presentation modes for acce…
The environmental impact of air pollution on the built heritage of historic Cairo (Egypt)
2020
In the last decades, many researchers investigated the relation between environmental pollution and the degradation phenomena on the built heritage, because of their rapid increase and growing harmfulness. Consequently, the identification of the main pollution sources has become essential to define mitigation actions against degradation and alteration phenomena of the stone materials. In this way, the present paper is focused on the study of the effect of air pollution on archaeological buildings in Historic Cairo. A multi-methodological approach was used to obtain information about the chemical composition of examined black crusts and to clarify their correlation with the air pollution, sp…
Multidisciplinary Approach for Evaluating the Geochemical Degradation of Building Stone Related to Pollution Sources in the Historical Center of Napl…
2020
Natural stones have represented one of the main building materials since ancient times. In recent decades, a worsening in degradation phenomena related mostly to environmental pollution was observed, threatening their conservation. The present work is focused on the minero-petrographic and geochemical characterization of black crust (BC) samples taken from the historical center of Naples, after selecting two pilot monumental areas. The latter were chosen based on their historical importance, type of material, state of preservation and position in the urban context (i.e., high vehicular traffic area, limited traffic area, industrial area, etc.). The building materials used and their interact…
Collapsibility of metastable sand by non-conventional oedometer tests
2018
The stability of foundations soils could represent a clear and present threat for the conservation of even well preserved buildings, particularly for Architectural heritage conservation and land art heritage. A dramatic case is the presence of collapsible metastable sands as foundation soils, as it occurs in the sacral complex Valle dei Templi in Agrigento. This site listed by UNESCO, stands on a crest of a calcarenite cuesta, overlaying a layer of these sands. When the collapsible sand is dry, the structure is strong enough to bond the sand particles together. When the sand becomes wet, a de-structuration mechanism occurs and the soil’s strength is compromised. This paper has a twofold aim…
Validity of NMR pore-size analysis of cultutal heritage ancient building materials containing magnetic impurities
2007
NMR relaxation time distributions, obtained with laboratory and portable devices, are utilized to characterize the pore-size distributions of building materials coming from the Roman remains of the Greek-Roman Theatre of Taormina. To validate the interpretation of relaxation data in terms of pore-size distribution, comparison of results from standard and in situ NMR experiments with results of the mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) has been made. Although the pore-size distributions can be obtained by NMR in terms of either longitudinal (T-1) or transverse (T-2) relaxation times distributions, the shorter duration of the T-2 measurement makes it, in principle, preferable, although the dete…
The Taste of Port City. Eat and the City
2013
WaterFood is a column centered on the culture of food dedicated to Port Cities due to the extraordinary richness and beauty of their ‘karstic’ interconnection with cooking; the articles of WaterFood will propose the bliss of the discovery of the beating heart and of the most sincere soul of Port Cities by tasting their flavor, by making the city a living cook book.
Development of a HMD for Virtual Acoustics. Application in a World Heritage (UNESCO) Building from the Valencian Civil Gothic
2016
The aim of this paper is to show the development of an immersive application in a historic visual and acoustic space. The “Llotja de la Seda” (“Silk Exchange Building”) is a late Valencian Gothic style civil building in Valencia (Spain), built between 1482 and 1548. The UNESCO considered it as a World Heritage Site in 1996 since “the site is of outstanding universal value as it is a wholly exceptional example of a secular building in late Gothic style, which illustrates the power and wealth of one of the great Mediterranean mercantile cities”.