Sensor integration for the documentation and planned maintenance of Cultural Heritage

Abstract. The sustainable preservation of cultural heritage, encompassing both tangible assets like monuments and intangible expressions such as traditions, necessitates proactive, evidence-based conservation strategies. This paper underscores the importance of rigorous, continuously updated documentation as the cornerstone of planned maintenance practices, an approach that ensures early detection of vulnerabilities, minimizes invasive interventions, and promotes the longevity and integrity of heritage assets. Within this context, UNESCO's World Heritage framework emphasizes the need for detailed documentation and systematic monitoring, particularly for complex sites like Italy’s Sacri Monti, a group of devotional complexes recognized for their integration of landscape, art, and architecture. Focusing on the Sacro Monte di Crea in Piedmont, this study details a case-specific strategy for documenting Chapel XVI, which faces critical conservation issues such as biological growth, salt efflorescence, and material degradation. A multimodal geomatics survey was conducted using terrestrial laser scanning, mobile mapping systems, drone-based photogrammetry, and smartphone LiDAR, enabling the creation of a comprehensive, high-resolution 3D dataset. These datasets were processed, aligned, and fused to produce an accurate and scalable digital representation of the site. This robust foundation supports not only traditional maintenance workflows but also emerging applications of artificial intelligence for 3D reconstruction and interpretation. The integration of such technologies marks a decisive step forward in enhancing both the documentation process and long-term conservation planning for vulnerable cultural heritage sites.