Digital data and cultural heritage: Using open-web data for the documentation, evaluation and conservation of Italian lighthouses

• Published in: Heritage at Risk pp. 166 - 174
• Main Authors: Mollica, Sonia, ElSharkaway, Maryam, La Russa, Federico Mario, Lento, Gennaro Pio, Nicastro, Giuseppe
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: CRC Press 2025
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Analysis; Dissemination; Documentation; Data; Lighthouses
• ISBN: 9781032867854; 9781032870670; 103286785X; 1032870672
• DOI: 10.1201/9781003530787-17

Cultural heritage is considered a precious asset for all nations worldwide. Peoples' background, identity, and historical assets are to be inherited and transferred to every coming generation, thus, effective translation and documentation is significant to prevent heritage loss. Digital tools and web-based data have provided more effective documentation and monitoring strategies to ensure optimum conservation of cultural heritage: technologies such as digital survey, modeling, 360 virtual tours and risk analysis can document heritage in different conditions, ie priority preparatory actions for restorations. We therefore want to use digital data for highly efficient documentation, assisting the restoration phase and greatly facilitating the decision-making process. It is in this context that the Italian lighthouses are inserted, and their architecture represents a high symbolic and identity value. Today, the subject of a sudden and inexorable transformation of the architectural organism into a relic of history, a fragment of memory by now past. In this sense, in fact, the maintenance of the lighthouse is now exclusively reserved for the apparatus containing the luminous optics, as well as the relative support structure, causing what appears to be the extreme aesthetic contrast symbol of technological progress. Through the application of a working protocol, we therefore want to explore the criticalities and potential of a process of monitoring and safeguarding the cultural heritage, ensuring its usability, inclusiveness and sustainability.