COMBINED USE OF GROUND-BASED SYSTEMS FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE CONSERVATION MONITORING

Abstract

The monitoring of Cultural Heritages conservation is an operational issue that requires a multidisciplinary approach able both to provide the dynamic and sustainable cultural heritage surveying and improve the understanding of historical materials in response to pollutants or climate changes, as well as natural events (e.g. earthquakes, avalanches and flooding hazards) [1]. Within such a framework, different methodologies are proposed in literature for Cultural Heritage monitoring, such as topographical surveys, digital photogrammetry, laser scanning, Global Positioning System (GPS), optical/radar satellite remote sensing, multispectral image analysis, 3-Dimensional (3D) modeling, Geographic Information System (GIS) [2]. The peculiarities of each case study and the difficult working conditions require particular solutions in terms of costs, acquisition time and generated products, which can be addressed and solved by considering a multi-technique surveying approach. In this study, an integrated system of proximal remotely-sensed tools is proposed and investigated for Cultural Heritage surveying, which consists of a Ground-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GBSAR), a GB Real Aperture Radar (RAR) and a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS). Preliminary results are presented for the Sant’Agostino Church in Cosenza to show the benefits of the proposed approach for Cultural Heritages monitoring.