From the 26th to the 28th of August, the city of Florence hosted Digital Ecosystems for Heritage 4.0, a symposium that brought together 132 participants from 28 countries across three landmark venues: the Rectorate of the University of Florence, the Istituto Geografico Militare, and the Museo degli Innocenti. Over three days, researchers, professionals and institutions gathered to share knowledge, debate openly, and converge around a common question: how do Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, cloud platforms, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data infrastructures help us document, interpret and protect heritage while staying aligned with today’s agendas on sustainability, risk management, and responsible innovation?

The symposium was the joint 4th GEORES and 10th Arqueológica 2.0 conference, organised by the CHEDAR (Cultural Heritage Digitalisation and Resilience) project and co-organised by the Istituto Geografico Militare and the Universitat Politècnica de València, with the support and patronage of a broad network of national and international institutions. 

A RICH ACADEMIC PROGRAMME

Under the theme “Digital Ecosystems for Heritage 4.0 – Artificial Intelligence, Values, and Risk Assessment for Conservation,” participants engaged across five thematic sessions:

• AI, Governance and Critical Futures of Cultural Heritage: Trust, Bias and Accountability. Heritage 4.0: Can We Trust Artificial Intelligence?
• Digital Twins and Computational Realities: Beyond 3D Modelling. New Frontier or New Constraint for Cultural Heritage?
• Heritage Under Pressure: Risk, Monitoring and Resilience Strategies. Resilience 4.0: Are We Ready to Protect Heritage in a Changing World?
• Museums After Digital: Accessibility, Hybrid Experiences and New Audiences. How will Museums of the Future Rethink Access, Experience and Mediation?
• Skills for Heritage 4.0: Training, New Professions and Knowledge Transmission. Who Will Safeguard the Digital Heritage? Educating Tomorrow’s Professionals?

Six distinguished keynote speakers anchored the discussion: 

1. Mario De Caro, Università Roma Tre | UNESCO Chair in Ethics of AI and Practical Wisdom
2. Chiara Dezzi Bardeschi, Head of UNESCO Antenna Office in Ukraine
3. Donatella Fiorani, Sapienza Università di Roma 
4. Rosa Lasaponara, CNR 
5. Franco Niccolucci, ARIADNE Research Infrastructure AISBL 
6. Jürgen Stamm, Dresden University of Technology 

More than 100 scientific contributions, including nine technical sessions and two poster sessions, kept the discussion alive well beyond the conference rooms, spilling into coffee breaks, shared lunches, cocktails and dinners.

But Digital Ecosystems offered a multifaceted experience. Beyond the academic programme, three panels invited professionals and academics to debate three pressing questions: 

1. ARTEMIS Project discussed  how Reactive Heritage Digital Twins can integrate semantic knowledge, AI, real-time data and interoperable services to support intelligent heritage monitoring, management and conservation
2. From Dubai to the World, explored through the CHEDAR paradigm, how concrete international cooperation in heritage, education, digital technologies and cultural resilience can be fostered.
3. Heritage is Not Engineering: Rethinking What Makes a Digital Twin Work, questioned how digital twins can genuinely serve cultural heritage through values, interpretation, governance and heritage-specific requirements.

SPECIAL SESSION: The Arno River and the 60th Anniversary of the 1966 Flood

Marking 60 years since the catastrophic 1966 flood of the Arno, Florence held a special session to explore the relationship between city, river, and heritage using new tools and paradigms. The University of Florence is currently building a Digital Twin of the Arno, integrating 3D surveys and territorial data to support monitoring and risk assessment. During the symposium, a large-scale 3D-printed portion of the Arno model was put on display, offering a tangible glimpse of the digital infrastructure under construction. The session invited experts and researchers from the Regione Toscana and the Comune di Firenze. It connected the memory of the flood with contemporary tools for flood risk management and heritage resilience. 

NOT JUST TALKING ABOUT HERITAGE – EXPERIENCING IT 

The programme also made room for heritage as something to be felt, not just studied.  “Sound Overflows”, the site-specific immersive experience designed by Mezzo Forte with the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil, and the scientific contribution of LInA – Lab of Information Modelling: Art, Architecture, Environment, offered a way of encountering heritage through sound and spatial perception, stepping outside the traditional format of scientific presentations. 

Participants also had the rare chance to come face-to-face with one of CHEDAR’s earliest and most impactful projects: the full-scale digitalisation of Michelangelo’s David, created for the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. Through 3D-printed replicas of parts of the statue, visitors could meet David eye to eye. 

The exhibition “Beyond the Replica: Michelangelo’s David: Light, Data and Materiality,” featuring Massimo Sestini’s photographs, took visitors behind the scenes of a genuinely complex mission, from the making of the model to its transport and installation, revealing the collective human and technological effort behind it.

THE ANGELO PERICOLI AWARD 

Digital Ecosystems 4.0 also hosted the CHEDAR Challenge, offering an award named after Angelo Pericoli (1915–2011), the Italian surveyor whose career bridged field measurement, geodetic astronomy and heritage conservation.

The Challenge invited young researchers and professionals to propose innovative ideas for cultural heritage, combining technology and creativity with real heritage needs.  A jury of five experts evaluated the proposals and selected three finalists.

The winner was Andrianov3D, with a digital twin that lets users not only move through a space but hear it. They propose recreating the acoustic experience of an architectural monument alongside its physical form. The team presented the new frontiers and challenges of using digital twins for documenting architectural and landscape heritage. 

WHAT’S NEXT?

One of the symposium’s most significant outcomes was the development of the recommendation On Accountability and Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Systems in Cultural Heritage Practice, announced during the Closing Ceremony. Building on the ICOMOS Ethical Principles adopted in Florence in 2014 and the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the document calls for a heritage-specific doctrinal position and operational guidance on the responsible development and use of AI. It places ethics by design, human oversight, accountability, authenticity and stewardship at the heart of AI-assisted heritage practice and is intended to be submitted to the ICOMOS Board for discussion.

The conference proceedings will be published shortly in collaboration with Springer, alongside two Special Issues in ANANKE and Virtual Archaeology Review.

Photographs, highlights and further insights from the three-day event are available on the conference website.

For three days, Digital Ecosystems for Heritage 4.0 became exactly what it set out to be: a strategic laboratory bringing together experts, researchers, practitioners, emerging professionals, organisations and communities. 

Photo gallery photos by Michelle Duong and Dimitrios Skarlatos