Advancing the Digitization and Analysis of Dynamic Cultural Heritage Objects

Movable and kinetic cultural heritage assets connect us to past technologies, craftsmanship, and societal practices. Bell towers, industrial infrastructures, movable bridges, and other mechanical structures exhibit behaviours and functions that reveal their human and historical context over time. Despite their significance, these dynamic heritage assets remain underrepresented in digitisation efforts, which often focus on static features and overlook motion, temporal evolution, and structural behaviour.

KINETIKA addresses this gap by enabling comprehensive digital documentation, monitoring, and analysis of cultural heritage assets with movable parts. By combining 4D digital twins, advanced 3D digitisation, and non-invasive cutting-edge technologies, the project captures both visible and non-visible characteristics, providing new insights into the functionality, preservation needs, and historical significance of kinetic heritage objects. 

KINETIKA aims to advance the digital representation, management, and conservation of movable and mechanically driven cultural heritage assets. The project addresses key challenges in digitisation, integration, and business adoption, enabling a more complete understanding and sustainable use of cultural heritage.

To achieve this, KINETIKA will:

• Establish a novel framework for developing digital twins focused on reusable cultural heritage assets with mechanical components, enriching the ECCCH digital twin catalogue.
• Develop a new business model and a Pan-European digital infrastructure to integrate third-party services, populate
• Deploy and demonstrate Industry 4.0 applications for cultural heritage, particularly for movable and mechanically driven assets conceptualised as ‘machines’.
• Promote wide adoption across the cultural heritage sector, supporting co-development pathways, market uptake, and digital transition in alignment with the ECCCH mission.
• Validate and assess the KINETIKA frameworks through full-scale pilots in industrial heritage sites and masonry structures, demonstrating scalability and real-world applicability.

KINETIKA will deliver a comprehensive toolbox and digital twin framework for movable and mechanically driven cultural heritage assets, providing heritage professionals with advanced tools for monitoring, analysis, and preservation:

• • A Multi-Dimensional Digital Twin implementation framework, including architecture definition, geometric modelling, sensing and data acquisition, mechanical behaviour modelling, and software integration. This includes KINETIKA DYNAMO, a drone-based system enabling automated inspections of inaccessible heritage components, generating high-resolution 3D scans and LiDAR imagery for structural analysis.
  • A suite of application-oriented tools for real-time monitoring, predictive simulation, structural assessment, maintenance planning, surface degradation detection, vibro-acoustic diagnostics, and remote inspection.
  • Seamless interoperability and usability within ECCCH, supporting third-party services, scientific resources, training, and sector-wide adoption of advanced digital practices.

In this section, you will find the official documents produced during the project lifetime. Reports and deliverables will be made public as the project progresses. These documents will be essential to share the results of our work with the scientific community, policy makers, and the general public. We invite you to visit this page regularly to stay updated on the new documents published by our project. If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact us.