Summary of objectives
The safeguard, fruition and support of the Cultural Heritage show evidence of a growing importance in the European society, particularly rich of Cultural Assets, demanding a rising attention to the theme. The European Commission gives high importance to the subject, promoting actions for protection and safeguarding, improving understanding and dissemination of the culture and history of the European citizen, making Cultural Heritage more available and accessible. The cultural assets can be seen, as consequence, as one of the most valuable “infrastructures” owned by the European citizens. As consequence any initiative in this context should consider the long term sustainability of this Cultural Assets “infrastructure” allowing the collection of the necessary funds and the exploitation all the potential socio-economic benefits.
The innovative concept behind this proposal is to combine the Cultural Assets infrastructure with another important European service infrastructure: Galileo and EGNOS. Galileo represents a unique opportunity to implement both institutional and commercial applications for the Cultural Assets protection, valorization and fruition with value-for-money solutions under the appropriate regulation umbrella. In this context the benefits coming from the Galileo and EGNOS “added values” and “differentiators”, with respect to solution based on GPS, are maximized together with the valuable role that GSA and GOC can play for this User Community. It has to be emphasized that this sector includes highly specialized applications (like Cultural Asset Management) and more commercial ones (in the Tourism related market) that appear to be very appealing as far as the market size is concerned: this proposal addresses innovative applications enabled by the unique GALILEO characteristics, features and performances.
