Project facts

Duration: 2023-01-01 - 2026-12-31
Project coordinator: The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Project consortium: Kentro Meleton Asfaleias (KEMEA); ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (ECoE); The Royal Museums of Art and History (KMKG); University of Turku; Hellenic Police; Etaireia Meleton Ypiresion Kai Logismikou Geochorikis Pliroforias I.k.e (KIKLO); Cellock LTD; MIRAlab SARL; Heritage Malta; AnySolution SL; Noesis Technologies
Funding bodies: European Research Executive Agency (REA)
Subject areas: Archaeology, Built Heritage, Digitization, Heritage Management, Heritage values - Identity, Intangible Heritage, Monuments - Sites, Objects, Sculptures, Tangible Heritage
Contact: oveiga@anysolution.eu
Budget: 3.993.500
Website: https://eu-enigma.eu/

Presentation

ENIGMA - EU-funded project - shall achieve excellence in the protection of Cultural Goods and artefacts from man-made threats by contributing to identification, traceability, and provenance research of Cultural Goods as well as by safeguarding and monitoring of endangered heritage sites.

Enigma objectives are designed to help the involved stakeholders better respond to this complex, and multi-dimensional problem, and leverage active collaboration by fostering and enabling interlinking of databases, and evidence-based deployment of preventative measures.

Impacts & Results

The project’s impact will reach:

Cultural heritage, defined as a testimony of past human activity and  around the globe suffers from wars, natural disasters and human negligence.

Cultural objects: exhibit great variety in their nature, size and complexity; from small artefacts and museum items to cultural landscapes, from historic buildings and ancient monuments to city centres and archaeological sites.

Cultural goods and artefacts are put at risk through several anthropogenic actions. Anthropogenic threats take various dimensions, ranging from theft from museums, private collections, and religious buildings, smuggling and illicit trade of cultural goods, the irremediable looting and demolition of archaeological sites by clandestine excavators, or simply neglecting of heritage sites.

ENIGMA’s detailed work plan is been presented, broken down into work packages (WPs) which follow the logical phases of the implementation of the project, and include consortium management and assessment of progress and results.

The project will identify the user requirements and functional specifications of the Enigma solution.

It will research and develop technological tools for the identification of registered and unregistered Cultural Goods. It will research and develop the necessary technological tools for decission-support on Cultural Goods provenance. It will integrate and test the tools developed extending the platform to include Data and communication exchange capabilities. It will validate the developed tools, selecting and defining pilot cases with realistic scenarios.