2023. november 23-24-én Cultural Property Protection – A kulturális örökség védelme krízishelyzetekben címmel rendezett nemzetközi konferenciát a Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum és a Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem, melyben közreműködött a Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, az NKÖV Nonprofit Kft., a Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem, a Magyar Rendészettudományi Társaság, a Hungary Helps Ügynökség és az AURORA nemzetközi projekt is.
A kétnapos esemény során egyéni előadások és gondolatébresztő kerekasztal beszélgetések formájában vitatták meg a világ minden tájáról érkező civil és katonai szakértők az örökségvédelem legfontosabb kérdéseit. A konferencia célja a nemzetközi tapasztalatok és jó gyakorlatok bemutatása és összehasonlítása, illetve az ezekből levont elméleti és gyakorlati következtetések megosztása volt.
Weboldal, jegyvásárlás, social platformok: https://linktr.ee/magyarnemzetimuzeum
Okay so hello everyone uh it’s a real pleasure and honor to be here with you today and so as was said uh my name is constant Dominic and I work for the German archaeological Institute and today I’m going to present you a project that we have been working on for a few
Years called CA which is a cultural heritage Response Unit so in a few words our goal with this project is to develop and maintain capacities in Germany to provide first aid to cultural heritage in the event of the crisis and within the framework of international disaster relief and we
Want to be able to do this both for movable and immovable Heritage and uh what we design is that we um embed cultural heritage expert directly into a technical humanitarian response Mission so I’m going to present you um our project in three parts first how we
Designed it then I will focus on the digital backbone that we are developing and finally uh what minimal standard procedures we are using and I will finish with a few words on the updates on what is coming for us in the next month so everything started in 2019 uh with a discussion between
Experts from the cultural heritage sector and the Civil protection sector on how we could work together to build something to respond for cultural cultural heritage directly after a crisis we had things for before for prevention we had projects for recovery but we had nothing to interv directly
When a crisis strikes so three Partners came together two come from the cultural heritage sector they are the lits Institute for archaeology lza the German archaeological Institute or Dai and one partner is from the Civil protection sector that is the German Federal Agency for technical relief or thw so our real
Strength and specificity is that those three actors have been working together from the beginning really from the conception phase of the project and until we go together there on the field um we have splitted um the different parts of the project uh between our different expertise so uh lza is an
Expert in restoration and conservation for objects so they are in charge of the movable Heritage we at the German archaeological Institute are responsible for the central coordination we are also mobilizing our department for building archaeology to be in charge of the immovable Heritage and Our IT department
Is developing uh the it and the data management of course the federal Agency for technical relief is in charge of the logistics uh for example transport setting up the camp managing the camp once on site um maybe the reason why we have the central coordination at the German archaological Institute is
Because we are actually a research institution um subordinated to the federal foreign office and we are intended to um intervene abroad So This falls under the umbrella of the federal foreign office another reason is that we are active at about 200 sites everywhere in the world
And so we have also very wide network of Partners um uh everywhere um on site that we can mobilize when we intervene so um based on all our expertise we have designed the following uh integrated team structure for a response unit so actually we used the model of an international disaster
Relief team in which we embedded two units you can see them here um at the bottom so two units dedicate for um cultural heritage so the um team leader would usually come or always come from a civil protection um sector while the units will be um leaded by people from
The cultural heritage U sector and then uh both sectors would work together uh throughout the whole project to give you an idea um we would be about 40 people for the court team team and this could be scaled up to about 90 people uh including local volunteers and
Partners so how would we be deployed so we really want to be within the framework of international disaster relief so a country an affected country makes a request for international assistance and uh then other countries can pledge um uh capacities and offer their help so here uh we would um
Intervene after the saving life phases is over we could propose our help to protect cultural heritage if it is required most of the time we are planning on intervening through the Union Civil protection mechanism so uh how works is that countries registers capacities or modules in advance uh with
The EU and when a disaster strikes the you will check the availability of those modules and then offer them or propose them to the affected country so here Germany would be able to propose its cultural heritage Response Unit um to affected countries um so uh at the moment actually the ucpm is developing
Guidelines for a new module that doesn’t exist yet for cultural heritage so this would be for movable immovable and intangible Heritage they are validating what we called Sops standard operating procedures which are step-by-step instructions describing all the phases of the mission and the task to be accomplished and also defining the
Resources to be uh affected to um uh those modules that means experts and equipment we are also at the within Thea project developing our own standard operating procedures going further into details uh on our tasks so damage assessment stabilization measures evacuation uh storage for um movable and immovable cultural heritage the idea
Would be to be Deployable within four days after the offer is accepted and we would stay for a minimum of 10 days and it could be prolonged um according to the needs uh because also yes we believe that uh cooperation at the European level is very important two of our
Partners are members of a project a European project called protet so it’s the Dai and the thw the goal of this project is really at the European level to encourage dialogue between cultural heritage and civil protection and to build a thematic Community uh in this area um to continue to work and be
Better integrated so several countries are involved uh France Germany Italy Portugal Spain turkey and also the organization IAM and we have published several um valuable um documents if you don’t know them yet I encourage you to to download them they are on the internet there is the key element for
European methodology which was published by the previous project Pro there and as with the pret we have published two technical bulletins containing detailed articles on uh different phases of the disaster cycle uh management so the project is actually ending at the end of the year we have our conference on
December 6th I think today’s the last day to register uh online if you want to participate and we are lucky because the project will continue uh starting in January with Pro 2 until the end of 202 five so you will probably hear more uh from this so now I’m moving on to the
Digital backbone so we are trying to develop a robust and dedicated um digital infrastructure to accompany the project through all the phases that means in preparation in the field and then for um post operation uh processing the goal here is to have a structured package of data that we can uh hand over
To the concerned country or institutions when we leave once we leave and and the data have to be uh compatible with the existing data structure and also be able to go through further processing so um what we did this is for um in the runup to an operation we would
Gather all the available information um on the site uh in a GIS project so that are photos videos satellite images uh floor plans if it’s a building inventories if it’s a collection and everything would be made available on mobile devices for experts on sites here
We have an example for uh what we did as a exercise in a way for uh Marakesh because we were not active on site but we used it to see which information we can gather so we created this project um bringing together information about the cultural heritage in mares and the Zone
Affected by the earthquake um and brought it together in a GIS project so we use Copernicus the European system system and also a satellite images provider like uh maxar um to develop this kind of um Maps then once onsite on the disaster site our experts will be able to collect their own information
Using the same uh movable um mobile devices uh and using also softwares that we have specially adapted so here you have an example for IM movable Heritage we are using a software called IDI field which was uh originally developed by by the German archaeological Institute for excavations and we have further extended
It to adapt it to the rapid um assessment and recording of damages on building so you can enter information about the building the walls the floors um everything um that concerns the the the floor plan and the damages so these pictures were taken during a summer
School that we organized in Rome um in September uh to really test our workflows for um removable Heritage so the digital documentation also concern removable Heritage for example if we have to evacuate a collection uh so here we also use uh another software which is called qfield it’s open source and we
Have also further developed it to include predefined forms where we could record all the information about the object and the damages we have also developed some ID cards uh with a unique QR codes and the idea is here to give a unique identification number to each
Object and the card is assigned to one object and can then follow the object through the whole process of stabilization storage um we try to have something that is flexible because we know sometimes we won’t have the time on the moment to assign a card to each
Object so actually a QR code can be assigned to one object a group of object all the objects in a room or all the objects in a building if necessary and afterwards uh it is possible to split those codes into different numbers to reassign them or to merge them if you
Realize that actually have two pieces of the same objects and you bring them together uh and all the information about the treatment that the object will received is also directly stored uh as data uh thanks to those cards um so now I’m going to talk a bit about the minimal standard procedures so
This is something we developed to make sure that we have a uniform quality throughout our work even if we are different teams working at different locations um and not being able to communicate with with each other so the msps are about three things the documentations the assessment to set
Priorities and um the first emergency treatments that are carried out on the objects so for immovable Heritage most of the time uh the first measures will happen directly on site on the building itself but for movable Heritage it will happen most most of the time on object that have been evacuated from the
Building to a safer location either close to the the site or a bit further away so in order to be able to act anywhere um our partner lza has developed this um mobile emergency conservation lab uh which consists of modular tables and different attachment for documentation wet cleaning dry
Cleaning and packaging um it is designed to be Universal that means it can treat at the same time painting archives Natural History collection archeological collections uh any type of uh materials and it can also be scaled up or down depending on the size of the objects or
The amount of the objects and uh of course the little ID cards that I showed you before will follow all along in all the stations to record what happened to the object at the different points our lab um is designed to be easily uh assembled and dismantled using
Very easy uh tools and just a few people and they fit uh into aluminum boxes uh matching International standards for transportation so they can be carried out um carried through by airplanes to anywhere uh in the world very um easily so to test all of our minimal standard procedures we actually organized a
Practical test in Dron uh a few weeks ago a month ago um and we were the three partners of culturea together so lights side the Dai and the thw and we also received the support of the Dron emergency Alliance um which is an organization bringing together um cultural heritage experts from different
Museum or cultural organizations and they train together they practice together they mutualize resources and they so provided volunteers for us and we were close to 60 people uh during three days uh to test everything one day was for setup one day for the exercise
Itself and one day uh to pack and to uh debrief so so here you can see um that the thw built a tense Village which is actually exactly what they buildt when they go on the disaster site for uh humanitarian help they also provided electricity water all the utilities that
Were necessary and then we deployed our lab within uh those STS so the first step is the checking and trage so all the object that have been evacuated uh are brought to this first station where they are documented and then they are divided between um the different
Um stations for restoration so you can see here we have a wet cleaning or dry cleaning depending on the material depending uh on the damage that the object has suffered and here it is always uh professional restorers uh who are intervening to provide really the first emergency uh stabilization
Treatment afterwards once they are clean and dry um the objects are photographed one more here you can’t really see but one on one of the table there is also the little card with QR code that is following all along and the last step is the packaging so that the object can be
Removed safely to a more permanent storage location and await a further conservation treatment while we were working under the tent there was also another team um testing our immovable uh procedures or procedur for immovable Heritage so um they use several Technologies such as structure for motion UAV uh 3D laser
Scanning to record the record the building and the damage they also use our apps and software to record everything digitally uh on the building and on the objects that were in the building and uh what we saw is that the use of those uh different Technologies could be very useful in a
Real scenario disaster scenario and also in very large um scale area that have been mostly destroyed so just to finish about this practical test uh it really helped us to together very uh useful um evaluation and feedback on our work work work flows and also it proved that our
Points that we made in the beginning was right that is that cultural heritage experts and civil protection experts can really work together in an integrated way to protect um cultural um Heritage so just to finish uh this is what we have done so far so we have by
The end of the year we have our standard operating procedures nearly validated we have an integrated team structure that we have agreed upon we have we have our mobile lab which is working and that we have tested in numerous occasions and we have um robust it backbone the goal for
Next year uh will be to develop our um network of experts and volunteers so mostly coming from Germany from other organization we’re trying to mobilize to have all the different expertise that we need depending on the the situation and we also carry out uh more training and
More exercise to be able to be ready our goal will be soon I don’t know exactly when but to be able to be deployed for the first time probably at first for assessment missions before going for the full full ones uh but yes this is um for
The coming year so thank you very much for your attention I’m available for any questions I have also brought some documentation if some of you are interested to know more and thank you very much for your attention and thank you again to the organizers uh for the invitation thank [Applause] you