Smart Cities and Historical Heritage

Keywords: Renewable Energy, Heritage, Micro-generation, Sustainability, Management Introduction and State of the Art Cultural Heritage and the debate regarding is protection are increasingly compared to the concepts of growth and sustainable development, starting from the observation that Heritage, as an expression of civilisation, is the first and clearest cultural reference point for a specific place. Even the European research funding program Horizon 2020 individuated, as priority actions, strategies for energy improvement and thermal enhancement of historical buildings and cultural districts, indicating as specific objectives of research: product and process innovation; the development and validation of suitable environmental performance assessment methods; financial strategies, to make large-scale interventions implementable, especially on public property assets. Main Object and Aims of the Research New strategies for public lighting, district heating systems, systems of distributed co-generation, systems of smart energy management, systems of production with the integration of renewable sources are all themes which, for a while now, have represented specific applications of "Smart Cities" programs but, until now, have not had any concrete experimentation on the historical and Cultural Heritage. The feasibility study focused on the possible improvement of thermal performance and micro-generation; it would not have been possible without the work carried out by the group headed by the Post-Graduate School (working on historical and archive inquiry, survey laser scanning campaign, diagnosis of materials, construction techniques and structural behaviour, technological deficits, monitoring of environmental conditions and of old technical plants and nets).