The Agenda 2030 includes a set of targets that need to be achieved by 2030. Although none of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focuses exclusively on cultural heritage, the resulting Agenda includes explicit reference to heritage in SDG 11.4 and indirect reference to other Goals. Achievement of international targets shall happen at local and national level, and therefore, it is crucial to understand how interventions on local heritage are monitored nationally, therefore feeding into the sustainable development framework. This paper is focused on gauging the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals with reference to cultural heritage, by interrogating the current way of classifying it (and consequently monitoring). In fact, there is no common dataset associated with monitoring SDGs, and the field of heritage is extremely complex and diversified. The purpose for the paper is to understand if the taxonomy used by different national databases allows consistency in the classification and valuing of the different assets categories. The European case study has been chosen as field of investigation, in order to pilot a methodology that can be expanded in further research. A cross-comparison of a selected sample of publicly accessible national cultural heritage databases has been conducted. As a result, this study confirms the existence of general harmonisation of data towards the achievement of the SDGs with a broad agreement of the conceptualisation of cultural heritage with international frameworks, thus confirming that consistency exists in the classification and valuing of the different assets categories. However, diverse challenges of achieving a consistent and coherent approach to integrating culture in sustainability remains problematic. The findings allow concluding that it could be possible to mainstream across different databases those indicators, which could lead to depicting the overall level of attainment of the Agenda 2030 targets on heritage. However, more research is needed in developing a robust correlation between national datasets and international targets.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of commonalities and differences in the concept of cultural heritage in Europe. This was achieved through a comprehensive academic and non-academic literature review focused on different definitions and conceptualisations related to cultural heritage internationally and in the European context. This is complemented with a comparative study in three European countries. This paper frames cultural heritage using the foundation set up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). It further discusses the European actors involved in defining heritage today. Finally, it focuses on three European countries and verifies that they share an understanding of cultural heritage including classifications, categorisation and heritage values. Findings from the overall study show how the definition of cultural heritage across Europe is reasonably homogeneous, and this is confirmed by the analysis of the three chosen test case studies. This finding is relevant to policy makers as it allows the support of potential common frameworks for heritage management at the European level, including risk management and risk reduction common methodologies. Further studies will shed light on the implementation issues which may arise from the creation of a common European framework for cultural heritage management, with emphasis on risk management and risk reduction of cultural heritage.

The Italian “Guidelines for risk classification and management, security assessment and monitoring of existing bridges”, published in 2020 after the collapse of the Polcevera viaduct in Northern Italy, present a multilevel methodology that involves on-site operators and universities/research centers carrying out and validating a management process from on-site survey to the bridges’ condition assessment. The main goals of this process are to acquire appropriate knowledge of the current state and its evolution over time of the overall buildings that compose the infrastructures, with the aim to support the managing companies in a decision-making process and the purpose of guaranteeing service in full safety. In particular, the guidelines propose the use of engineered software platforms for data digitalization of the structures with the aim to create a Building Management System (BMS) in which the main historical and current state information is collected and can then be uploaded continually. In 2020, the CUGRI (Inter-University Research Center for the Prediction and Prevention of Major Hazards) and the SAM (Southern Highways Company) launched an innovative surveillance management model established on a multidisciplinary approach based on Geography Markup Language (GML), BIM tools, on-site interdisciplinary inspections, and multi-hazard analysis. The experimented methodology provides the on-site training of inspectors, the elaboration of suitable BIM models according to the above guidelines, and AINOP (National Archive of Public Infrastructures) requirements, and an expert judgement process for preliminary bridge assessment and data validation to support the maintenance managing process. The study presents an innovative operative model for the surveillance process, which integrates on-site expeditious inspections and multidisciplinary expert judgements by using an appropriate digitalization of the bridges with BIM and GIS technologies. The paper illustrates the experimental methodology performed on the A3 highway, which connects Naples to Salerno in Southern Italy, highlighting issues and opportunities, moreover in a first interdisciplinary contribution of object-oriented landslide mapping modelling.