December 22nd, 2015 – A lot can be done for the Protection of Cultural Property in seismic areas, the aim of the PON01-02710 project, funded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research and implemented by the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). The project, known as “Maximum,” was recently presented at the Italian Embassy and the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington DC, illustrating the architecture infrastructure, its monitoring system and major technological and scientific results obtained in demonstrators set in the Calabria Region. The two workshops saw the participation of INGV representatives as well as of the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA), the University of Calabria, federal agencies such as the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and the US Agency for Development Cooperation (USAID), the National Gallery, and several American universities and research centers. “The event – explained Maria Fabrizia Buongiorno, INGV researcher and scientific coordinator for the project – was organized with the twofold objective of presenting the technical capabilities developed by Italian research institutes and, simultaneously, open a dialogue with operating American institutions on how to address the complexity of the technological challenges needed to improve monitoring of the urban environment, paying particular attention to surveillance, security and protection of urban areas and critical infrastructure (such as cultural heritage)”. In fact, urban areas are very complex environments, constantly evolving, and thus require real-time or near-real-time technological solutions, so as to ensure the effective monitoring of resources and deal with the multi-risk assessment. “This workshop is part of the activities under the responsibility of the working group ‘Earth Science’ coordinated by INGV and USGS (activated in 2013), under the scientific and technological cooperation agreement between Italy and the United States” confirmed the INGV researcher. The meeting concluded with an event dedicated to spreading the Calabria Region’s cultural and territorial wealth, home to the development of the Maximum Project. (Red)
