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PANBACE

Pan-European Historical Building Surveying and Engineering Records Through Advanced Continuing Professional Education

The objectives of PANBACE are to strengthening the European Research Area regarding a number of interdisciplinary, mutually coherent thematic all in the field of technology enhanced preservation, maintenance, e-learning, cooperation and co-working within the cultural heritage environment. The aim is to implement the PANBACE 'Method' through the International Knowledge Exchange Network portal (IKAN), which allows for the "e-Educational" scheme consisting of "e-Learning" and "e-Participant" programs for the interested public by providing practical information for their education and use through multi-media messaging regarding the cultural heritage domain. IKAN will foster innovative instruments for intelligent heritage and tourisms, coupled with other software's collecting data, which focuses on concrete strategy development for the dissemination of results, the establishment of a strong know-how about component-based and distributed E-Learning application systems, and the preparation of commercial exploitation of the final results.

Scientific and Technological Objectives

  • Objective 1: The PANCHECK Method
    Improve the quality and reliability of preservation, for historic buildings through the development of PANCHECK 'METHOD' for historic properties whose collected data is disseminated into the International Knowledge Exchange Network portal (IKAN), which contains the Cultural Heritage Assessment Tool (CHAT), the Critical Activities and Monitoring Elements in Technology (CAMET) tools, and the Defining the Scope of an Infestation Study into Wet and Dry Rot Through the Fungal-Grid Layout (DSIS) coupled with the Global Mapping Matrix Model (GMAM).

  • Objective 2: The PANBACE Framework
    PANBACE once implemented will assimilate into a common associated database structure containing past and present coupled with a prediction matrix to forecast the built environment, thereby constituting the "Virtual Society" network, which would benefit from increased public usage. This "Virtual Society" in conjunction with established quality assurance monitoring stations to provide education and outreach networking opportunities, and other pertinent information, thus assisting in the development of a proper user-friendly interactive Internet and Intranet IKAN 'toolbox' database portal.

  • Objective 3: Pan European Cultural Heritage Research Area Charter, CECHAS
    The Council of Ministers has recognized the benefits of a European approach on research infrastructure in the context of the European Research Area. In June 2001, it invited the Commission, in close collaboration with the Member States, to explore the needs for new arrangement to support policies related to research infrastructures. CECHAS (Consultants for European Cultural Heritage Assessment), International Historic Preservation Charter aims to establish a Strategy Forum composed of high-level representatives and experts directly linked to policy-making in those Member States wishing to take part, to establish one governing body through whose objective is through this charter to increase public knowledge of our historic resources, the establishment of better means of identifying and administering them, encouragement of their preservation, improve the planning and execution of State assisted projects and assist in the economic growth and development for the preservation of Cultural Heritage and historic properties throughout the European Union and International regions.

  • Objective 4: Demonstration, Proving and Take-up
    To deliver demonstration systems that show the practical effectiveness of the PANBACE results and promote their take-up. It is likely that the demonstration systems will be scaled up, 'industrial strength' versions of a sub-set of the case studies produced in addressing Objective 2. The demonstration systems will be produced in close collaboration with potential end-user organisations and forums. We will liaise with on-going FP5 or national projects, which may offer facilities for demonstration of different components (the prototypes of these components will be developed within PANBACE and will be integrated with the legacy systems developed in other projects).

  • Objective 5: Leadership and Standards
    To work with on-going FP5 thematic networks and national outreach or dissemination activities, including the following:
    - The Learning Grid of Excellence working group, which brings together experts in Grid computing and Service Oriented Architectures with pedagogues, psychologists and social scientists in order to facilitate the establishment of a European Learning Grid Infrastructure.
    - The UNICORE forum, which is responsible for the distribution and specification of the Grid toolkit UNICORE Beside efforts towards standardisation PANBACE actively disseminates its outcomes through traditional means such as conferences, web pages and publications in scientific and other publications. In order to reach a wide dissemination on the cultural heritage area the PANCHECK and CECHAS efforts will actively address the experts in the field.

  • Objective 6: Training of Researchers and Practitioners
    Conferences and workshops are to be established allowing for the training and exchange of information and awareness development programs, which will help prepare the policy making, industrial, and related service sectors in the use and applications of PANCHECK. A strategic foresight by establishing a network of "Virtual Institutes" research areas throughout Europe and the joining member States will be developed in order to disseminate the study programs. The results will provide policy makers, applicable governing bodies, PhD-network for PhD-students, and other interested parties the information required to promote and develop a competitive "Next Generation" e-learning and e-participation tool.

    Potential Impact

    The innovations of PANBACE are in all layers of the PANBACE conceptual framework. The innovations are in the way the information can be used and accessed (user layer) how the information is presented and classified (E-Learning layer) and also in the way the data and the analysis engines are combined into a virtual resource pool building a virtual institute. This will assist in the development of a Standardised classification and description of cultural heritage from different domains thereby fostering relevance to ongoing and emerging research in the field of Cultural Heritage. PANBACE will ensure effectiveness in e-learning on Europe's cultural heritage assets by providing extensible access to resources pertaining to a large number of aspects regarding cultural heritage domain. Efficiency in e-learning will be achieved through the possibilities of individualisation, context, assessing real-time data, tracking possibilities and learning history, and just-in-time and on-demand learning. The field of e-learning has attracted a large number of researchers and some major research projects at both national and European level. Emerging in FP4, and reaching its hitherto highest peak in FP5, the efforts and resources being spend on the different aspects of e-learning certainly has made it into a major area of cross-disciplinary research. One of the basic layers the E-Learning portal relies on is the distributed data layer for the cultural heritage data. The data collected so far in a wide range of different data formats, different properties and typically not exportable will be made accessible in a standardized way. Recent standardisation efforts within the GGF lead to the definition of an architecture that is based on WebServices called Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) that introduced the term GridServices. With GridServices the WebServices framework is enriched with capabilities of dynamic resource location and usage very similar to the P2P file sharing networks. Relying on the Grid concept PANBACE will extend the basic GridServices in accordance with ongoing standardisation efforts of the corresponding data access working groups of GGF for the access to cultural heritage data stored in different type of databases and efforts.

    Access to Europe's Knowledge and Educational Resources The PANBACE framework represents a new approach to the challenge of providing access to Europe's knowledge and educational resources. By implementing and combining a set of standardised mechanisms for protecting and managing digital rights, the PANBACE framework will be an arena were sharing of knowledge and educational resources can be done free of the abovementioned risks. In order for Europe's present and future knowledge and educational resources in the field of cultural heritage to be assimilated and appear on the e-learning portal, the PANBACE - project will explore an innovative model of producing and presenting online e-Learning modules. Researchers and other professionals will be encouraged to "publish" e-Learning modules.

    Added value at a European level

    PANBACE offers innovations driven by the use of advanced materials, design, construction, sensing, and control technologies. This E-learning methodology will greatly increase our understand as to how buildings significantly alter the environment, their consumption percentage of the raw stone, gravel, virgin wood, and sand used globally each year, amount of energy and water used annually worldwide, and their construction and demolition waste produced as municipal garbage.

    Please contact us should you wish to have further details regarding PANBACE.

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