The Green Heritage Cluster introduces itself at the CAA Conference 2025

On May 5, 2025, the international cultural heritage community came together at the CAA Conference 2025 for the workshop “Towards a Green Cluster for Cultural Heritage”, an event showcasing how collaborative EU-funded research is tackling the environmental and technological challenges in cultural heritage preservation.

The Green Heritage Cluster: safeguarding our common past

This workshop was also an opportunity to showcase the collaboration between ARGUS, NERITES, ChemiNova and iPhotoCult, four EU-funded projects which started collaborating to deliver impactful results about cultural heritage preservation in remote areas. 

The European Union has prioritized the development of advanced remote technologies to safeguard cultural heritage treasures under the Horizon Europe initiative, specifically through the call HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-01-01. This program seeks innovative, non-destructive solutions for monitoring and preserving cultural heritage, addressing challenges like pollutant analysis, structural integrity, and data accessibility. Collaboration is key to tackling such a multifaceted challenge. Projects funded under this call are bringing together interdisciplinary teams of scientists, engineers, cultural heritage experts, and policymakers. These collaborations emphasize synergies in research, pooling knowledge and resources to maximize impact.

Together for an impactful workshop at the CAA conference

The half-day workshop at the CAA introduced an emerging approach supported by the European Commission—the formation of green research clusters. These clusters bring together projects with complementary objectives to foster collaboration, share tools and methods, and align with Europe’s sustainability goals. 

Workshop Objectives: Building a Green Cluster for Cultural Heritage

The central theme of the workshop was not only presenting the creation of a Green Cluster focused on sustainable cultural heritage innovation, but also calling for external experts to collaborate together in exchanging ideas and best practices. 

The workshop addressed three critical pillars:

• Green technologies and materials for conservation
• Impacts of climate change and environmental hazards
• Advanced tools for remote monitoring of heritage assets

Workshop Agenda Highlights

George Pavlidis introduced the session with a call for increased coordination between stakeholders as a way to enhance impact, visibility, and innovation across Europe’s cultural landscape, and continued with the presentation of the ARGUS project. The other projects were then presented: ChemiNova by Laura Melpomeni-Tapini, iPhotoCult by Anastasia Giakoumaki and Nerites by Lydia Stergiopoulou. Each presentation highlighted the project's vision, mission, and technical solutions, including tools like photonics, spectroscopy, autonomous monitoring, marine robotics, and advanced photogrammetry. 

Collaborative discussion and end-user engagement

Participants in the workshop had the opportunity to engage in real-world use cases. Each one of the use cases was a practical example from each of the projects: 

• Digital e3D Models (ChemiNova) - Use of e3D models for conservation and risk monitoring of diverse cultural assets.
• Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) & Climate Change - Green Tools (Nerites) - Eco-friendly tools for underwater cultural heritage (UCH) affected by climate change.
• Adapting Novel Tools to Cultural Heritage Needs (iPhotoCult) - Using AI-integrated photonics for real-time diagnosis and remote monitoring.
• Multi-modal Digital Twin for Preventive Preservation (ARGUS) - Building multi-modal digital twins using remote sensors and AI. 

Conclusions and closing remarks

In the final session, participants reflected on the growing need for green, scalable, and interoperable tools, on the importance of shared pilot sites to validate cross-project synergies and on the value of remote labs, living labs, and public engagement strategies George Pavlidis closed the event, emphasizing the EU's role in nurturing collaborative innovation that not only protects Europe’s past but also builds resilience for its cultural future.