COMBINED USE OF GROUND-BASED SYSTEMS FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE CONSERVATION MONITORING A. Montuori*, G. Luzi**, S. Stramondo*, G. Casula***, C. Bignami*, E. Bonali***, M.G. Bianchi***, M. Crosetto** * Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) - Centro Nazionale Terremoti (CNT), Italy ** Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Division of Geomatics, Castelldefels, Spain *** Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) - Sezione di Bologna, Italy ABSTRACT The monitoring of Cultural Heritages is an operational issue that requires a multidisciplinary approach to provide their dynamic and sustainable surveying in response to climate changes and natural events. Within such a framework, an integrated system of proximal remotely-sensed tools is investigated for Cultural Heritage monitoring purposes in a seismic area. It consists of a Ground-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GBSAR), a GB Real Aperture Radar (RAR) and a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS). Preliminary results, gathered over the Sant’Agostino Church in Cosenza city, allow demonstrating the benefits of the proposed approach for Cultural Heritages monitoring. Index Terms— Cultural Heritage, GBSAR, Interferometric RAR, Terrestrial Laser Scanner, Seismicity 1. INTRODUCTION The monitoring of Cultural Heritages conservation is an operational issue that requires a multidisciplinary approach able both to provide the dynamic and sustainable Cultural Heritage surveying and improve the understanding of historical materials in response to pollutants or climate changes, as well as natural events (e.g. earthquakes, avalanches and flooding hazards) [1]. Within such a framework, different methodologies are proposed in literature for Cultural Heritage monitoring, such as topographical surveys, digital photogrammetric analysis, laser scanning, Global Positioning System (GPS), optical/radar satellite remote sensing, multispectral image analysis, 3-Dimensional (3D) modeling, Geographic Information System (GIS) [2]. The peculiarities of each case study and the difficult working conditions require particular solutions in terms of costs, acquisition time and generated products, which can be addressed and solved by considering a multi-technique surveying approach. Within such a framework, both radar and laser technologies have demonstrated their effectiveness for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) purposes thanks to the propagation of electromagnetic waves, which can ensure fast, efficient detailed and highly accurate measurements of observed buildings during both day and night-time [3]-[5]. In this study, an integrated system of proximal remotely- sensed tools is proposed and investigated for Cultural Heritage surveying, which consists of a Ground-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar (GBSAR), a GB Real Aperture Radar (RAR) and a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS). Preliminary results are presented for the Sant’Agostino Church in Cosenza to show the benefits of the proposed approach for Cultural Heritages monitoring. The paper is organized as follows. In section 1 a brief introduction about the Cultural Heritage monitoring is provided together with the relevant state of the art. In section 2 the methodology at the basis of the proposed approach and the ground-based instrumentation implemented in this study are described. In section 3 some preliminary results are provided for the test heritage of Sant'Agostino Church in Cosenza. Finally, conclusions are drawn in section 4. 2. METHODOLOGY In this section, the methodology and the tools at the basis of the proposed multi-disciplinary and multi-technique integrated system approach are briefly described. 2.1. Ground-Based Radar System The GB Radar System is a powerful tool with interferometric capabilities for both topographic deformation and structural vibration monitoring and measurements [3]-[4]. The latter can be provided through the interferometric processing technique, which allows measuring changes in the position of an object by comparison of the reflected electromagnetic wave phase at different times, with an accuracy depending on radar system characteristics [3]-[4]. The GB Radar System can be used in two different configurations: the interferometric GBSAR (see Fig. 1a) and interferometric RAR (see Fig. 1b). The first one allows providing maps of topographic deformation 4086 978-1-4799-5775-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE IGARSS 2014