Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1524836
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 4 AUGUST 2024 3 HERITAGE Heritage Malta reaffirms its commitment to five EU-Funded projects HERITAGE Malta is proudly reconfirming its ongoing ded- ication to five pivotal EU-fund- ed projects aimed at preserving cultural heritage and combat- ing modern challenges: Clean Oceans and four Horizon Eu- rope projects, namely ENIGMA, STECCI, IMPULSE and HERIT- ALISE. The Clean Oceans initiative is a partnership between Heritage Malta and Norway's Stavanger Maritime Museum – MUST. Over the past two years, the two institutions have collaborated in harnessing cutting-edge technol- ogy to digitise and record both tangible and intangible maritime cultural heritage, addressing the threats of pollution and climate change. In June, they co-organ- ised a hybrid conference titled 'Clean Oceans and Mapping Our Seas' at the Malta Maritime Mu- seum in Birgu, inviting public participation to discuss recent developments in the field. Horizon Europe is the Euro- pean Union's key funding pro- gramme for research and inno- vation. Heritage Malta is part of the Horizon Europe ENIGMA Project, a three-year initiative focused on creating sustainable strategies to combat the illic- it trafficking of cultural goods. This project brings together an interdisciplinary team of aca- demics and scientists to establish mechanisms for tracing, protect- ing, safeguarding, and repatriat- ing cultural artefacts. The agency is also at the fore- front of addressing the impact of climate change on cultur- al heritage, through its role in the Horizon Europe STECCI Project. This initiative involves the assessment and conserva- tion of medieval tombstones, known as stećci, in Bosnia and Herzegovina and surrounding regions. Heritage Malta is ap- plying advanced 3D digitisation techniques to document these monuments and sites in high resolution, and creating virtual tours and an educational game from this data, showcasing its partners' work on cultural her- itage research, climate scenario analysis, and remedial conserva- tion practices. IMPULSE — an acronym in- spired from 'IMmersive dig- itisation: uPcycling cULtural heritage towards new reviving StratEgies' — is another Horizon Europe-funded initiative which Heritage Malta participates in. This project is aimed at revo- lutionising the digitisation of cultural heritage, whilst stream- lining digitisation processes for immersive environments used in education and the arts. The fourth Horizon Eu- rope-funded project that Her- itage Malta has embarked on is HERITALISE. Its mission is to research and develop advanced digitisation techniques and solutions for documenting and representing diverse cultural heritage assets more compre- hensively. In addition, AI-pow- ered data-processing tools such as Machine Learning (ML) will be developed, allowing users to learn more about a particular object, what research has been done, and what results have been derived from it. Page 2 of 2 Heritage Malta's commitment to these projects, spearheaded by its Digitisation Unit, under- scores the agency's dedication to preserving cultural heritage through innovation, collabora- tion, and sustainable practices.