The protection of artistic and cultural heritage is a major challenge due to its peculiarities and its exposure to significant natural hazards. Several methodologies exist to assess the condition of artistic heritage and to protect it from exceptional actions. Moreover, novel digital technologies offer many solutions able to deliver a digital replica of artifacts of interest, so that a reduction in the uncertainties in the analysis models can be achieved. A rational approach to the preservation and protection of artistic heritage is based on traditional approaches supported and integrated by novel technologies, so that qualitative and quantitative indicators of the current condition of artistic heritage can be defined and validated in an interdisciplinary framework. The present paper reports the results of an approach to the maintenance and preservation of art objects housed in a museum complex based on a comprehensive digital path towards a Historical Digital Twin (HDT). A workflow aimed at estimating the stress regime and the dynamic properties of two sculptures, based on the detailed three-dimensional model resulting from a laser scanner survey, is illustrated and discussed. The results highlight the great advantages resulting from the integration of traditional and novel procedures in the field of conservation of artistic assets.

The seismic sequences occurred in Italy during the last decades confirmed the vulnerability of historical centres and the need for novel procedures aimed at preserving the cultural heritage and mitigating the structural risk. Building conservation and safeguard require a multidisciplinary approach, so that an accurate assessment of buildings conditions, both conservative and structural in nature, can be accomplished; as a result, potential risk factors and the associated interventions to increase the resilience of sites and historic buildings can be successfully identified. Herein, an insight on the technical literature offers some reflections about a reliable framework for conservation plans that could comply with the current knowledge and technology, and therefore potentially defined proactive. The opportunities given by the integration of information systems and structural monitoring techniques are analysed in the light of a SWOT analysis able to support a rational approach to the preservation of historical centres. The proposed SWOT matrix is the result of an interdisciplinary effort and reflects the key features of a real case, paradigmatic of many historical centres of the Abruzzi Region. In such a perspective, this study represents a step forward an effective and rational approach to the structural maintenance and preservation of historical centres.

The paper deals with an interdisciplinary research activity aiming at developing a digital and integrated tool able to collect several data concerning the cultural heritage, and to manage and communicate them to a wide community. The small church of San Menna, located in the hamlet with same name in the municipality of Lucoli not so far from L’Aquila city, was the object of the research. The church has been chosen for its historical significance, its architectural peculiarity and for the valuable artworks that it preserves. Based on a photogrammetric model of the church, also used for the remote analysis of cultural asset (planimetric and evolutionary hypotheses, three-dimensional stratigraphic analysis, etc.) a virtual word usable in Virtual Reality (VR) has been developed. The VR setting allows the accessibility of a digital semantic model with information that can be activated with special interactive hotspots (images, texts and audio), which are able to provide an immersive and all-encompassing experience to the tourist. The potentialities of the same tool in the context of diagnosis and conservation process related to cultural heritage in seismic areas, such as those of the Abruzzi Apennines, have also been investigated through the integration of forms concerning the significant features of the artistic assets surveyed in the construction.

The modeling of the historical architecture can be characterized by different levels of geometric development, more or less advanced, which correspond to different values of deviation between the real object and its three-dimensional representation. The aim of the paper is a critical study of the different levels of geometry (LoG) that the architectural elements of a model can have in relation to the efforts required to achieve them and the modeling objectives. More specifically, the contribution of this study proposes—on the basis of a survey campaign of a case study conducted by drone—the evaluation of the deviation between the point cloud and HBIM models with the different levels of development in order to assess their reliability according to specific objectives, such as the documentation of the architectural asset, feasibility study, restoration project, etc.