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Cultural heritage is one of the most exceptional resources characterizing the Italian territory. Archaeological heritage, i.e., the archaeological sites with different types of archaeological artifacts, strongly contributes to enriching the national and international cultural heritage. Nevertheless, it is constantly exposed to external factors, such as natural deterioration, anthropic impact, and climate-related hazards, which may compromise its conservation. In Italy, many archaeological areas are affected by significant soil settlements that involve a large part of monuments. This paper focuses on the landslide hazard assessment of the archaeological site of Pietrabbondante (Molise region, Italy). The impact of the expected rainfall regimes, according to the EURO-CORDEX projections, on slope stability conditions were evaluated through the application of a physically based model that couples a hydraulic and a mechanical model to evaluate slope stability evolution due to pore pressure changes. Given the unavoidable lack of knowledge of the geotechnical soil properties in an archaeological heritage area, the proposed method considered the random uncertainty of soil parameters by means of a probabilistic approach in order to assess the stability conditions in terms of probability of occurrence of a landslide. The results of this study provide a reference for the safety assessment and preventive conservation of archaeological areas characterized by high cultural value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention to the condition assessment and conservation of cultural heritage is increasing due to growing sensitivity to the preservation of the built and natural environment and awareness of the risks associated with natural hazards. In this context, a comprehensive approach to the conservation and valorization of cultural heritage requires the combined action of different skills to achieve reliable assessment of the conditions of valuable assets and sites based on qualitative and quantitative indicators. This paper explores the issues of conservation and sustainable management of archaeological sites, considering humanistic and technical aspects. It reviews the current rules and practices concerning the maintenance and administration of archaeological heritage and outlines the implementation of a novel procedure, based on low-cost tools, to assess and describe the current condition of archaeological assets. Specific attention is paid to the interaction between experts and researchers operating in both humanistic and technical fields and to the knowledge and data contribution available on modern web-based platforms to implement reliable and low-cost data acquisition for the development of worthwhile plans for the conservation and enhancement of cultural heritage. The Samnite complex of Pietrabbondante, Molise, South Italy, is employed to apply and check the proposed tools in the real world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Veterinary services, along with public health professionals, can be involved in major adverse events resulting from processes of the Earth striking both humans and animals, so-called non-epidemic emergencies. A dedicated information system able to collect specific data and tprovide information to stakeholders is a pre-requisite for the management of these events. The Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell'Abruzzo e del Molise "G. Caporale", home of the National Reference Centre for Urban Hygiene and Non-Epidemic Emergencies (IUVENE), has been entrusted with the development of a system that provides different veterinary operational levels with a spatial and decisional tool to assist them in cases of natural disasters. This kind of decision support system is still missing at a national level. The present paper describes the implementation of the Veterinary Information System for Non-Epidemic Emergencies (SIVENE), an innovative, flexible, and user-friendly system and modular tool including a database, web application, mobile app, and Web Geographic Information Systems (GIS) component. SIVENE provides National Veterinary Services (local health units and national and regional veterinary services) with an emergency management tool responding to the needs identified in the context of catastrophic events, thanks to the data maintained within its database and converted into real time information. The Italian National Veterinary Services, public health professionals, and policy makers are asked to participate at different levels in the decision-making process for the management of non-epidemic emergencies. A decision support system offering the different administrative and operational emergency management levels with a spatial and decisional tool to be used in the case of natural disasters is still missing at the national level. Within this context, the Italian General Directorate for Animal Health of the Ministry of Health funded a research project for the implementation of a new Veterinary Information System for Non-Epidemic Emergencies (SIVENE), an innovative real-time decision support tool for emergency response in a disaster management scenario. SIVENE was developed according to a multi-layer architecture with four integrated components: the database layer, which was implemented by an RDBMS Oracle 11 g; the ReST service layer, which was created using J2EE, Spring, and MyBatis technologies; the web application (business framework and user interface), which was developed in Angular4 framework using TypeScript language; and the web Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which was realized through the implementation of a geodatabase in Oracle RDBMS 11 g. This system allows us to build up and dynamically create a set of dedicated checklists to be used in the field when gathering the information needed for the management of non-epidemic emergencies; employ the application on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones; and use the web GIS to manage and visualize data of veterinary interest and territorial maps of risk and damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]