Papers by Stefano Marsella
The Fire of Saint Paul Outside the Walls: a very retrospective scientific investigation, 2023
On the night of July 15, 1823, the papal basilica of St. Paul outside the walls of Rome was serio... more On the night of July 15, 1823, the papal basilica of St. Paul outside the walls of Rome was seriously damaged by a fire. There is an extensive bibliography on the history of the basilica up to the fire and on its reconstruction. On the contrary, the documents aimed at investigating the causes of the fire are limited in number and characterised by a historical approach. Furthermore, at the state of archival and bibliographic knowledge, there is no relevant text carried out according to the current criteria used for fire investigations. The research, starting from literature and archive documents, aims to investigate the causes of the fire, using the method of scientific investigation of the fire based on archival documents and the knowledge acquired in recent years through research on the dynamics of wood and vegetation fires. English translation of the paper published in the proceedings of the conference "Città contemporanee e sicurezza tecnica: dall'incendio della Basilica di San Paolo alle città del XXI secolo" Rome, 17 May, 2023.
L’incendio di San Paolo fuori le mura: un’investigazione scientifica molto a posteriori, 2023
Nella notte del 15 luglio 1823 la basilica papale di San Paolo fuori le mura di Roma fu gravement... more Nella notte del 15 luglio 1823 la basilica papale di San Paolo fuori le mura di Roma fu gravemente danneggiata da un incendio. Sulla storia della basilica fino all’incen- dio e sulla sua ricostruzione esiste un’ampia bibliografia. Al contrario, i testi volti ad approfondire le cause dell’incendio, oltre ad essere limitati nel numero, sono connotati da un approccio storico mentre, allo stato delle conoscenze archivistiche e bibliografiche, manca un testo di indagine svolta secondo i criteri attualmente utilizzati per le investigazioni dell’incendio. La ricerca, partendo dai documenti di letteratura e di archivio, si propone di indagare sulle cause utilizzando il metodo di investigazione scientifica dell’incendio basato sulle conoscenze acquisite negli ultimi anni attraverso la ricerca sulla dinamica degli incendi di vegetazione.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), 2019
2017 IEEE 14th International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control (ICNSC)
The number of natural disasters is growing. A considerable number of them derives directly from c... more The number of natural disasters is growing. A considerable number of them derives directly from climate changes and generates a deep impact on cultural heritages. As a result, the need for solutions able to cope with uncertain weather conditions and increased natural disasters is getting urgent. STORM is a European Research and Innovation Action co-funded in the H2020 framework that is aimed at creating intelligent tools which will gather data from libraries, sensors and crowd-sensing techniques in order to enable cultural heritage stakeholders (e.g., the organisations which have to manage the sites) to implement the most appropriate actions in the prevention, response and recovery phases of emergencies which could impact on cultural heritages. More specifically, the project aims at addressing those risks deriving from climate change, which in the near future is going to worsen most of the present hazards, as flash floods, heat waves and forest fires. As such, the approach adopted by the project is particularly fit for the purpose of being integrated with smart city systems which are increasingly growing in number and variety. Even if safety issues are not considered central in the overall concept of smart city, it's plain that the huge quantity of data that can be gathered and processed in any future STORM-like urban cultural heritage compound should feed into the available smart city systems. On the other way round, the mass of data produced or processed by smart city systems have the potential to impact dramatically on emergency management and prevention activities to be implemented by cultural heritage stakeholders. The paper will illustrate the approach that the STORM project is adopting to mitigate the impact of climate changes on cultural heritages and the mutual benefits which could derive from an integration of the STORM outcomes with smart cities systems through the use of standard emergency data exchange protocols and an integrated framework aimed at improving existing processes related to the three identified areas: Prevention, Response and Policy.
2022 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for Living Environment (MetroLivEn)
2022 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for Living Environment (MetroLivEn)
The purpose of this work is to illustrate the methodology and show the results obtained from the ... more The purpose of this work is to illustrate the methodology and show the results obtained from the study and the design of the Internet of Everything system for the Papal Basilica and Sacred Convent of Saint Francis in Assisi, Italy, considering all the sub-projects that have already started and the new sub-projects that are going to start
ACTA IMEKO, 2021
This work would like to provide a preliminary contribution to the draft of standard procedures fo... more This work would like to provide a preliminary contribution to the draft of standard procedures for the adoption of Total Stations by rescuers in emergency situations, so as to offer a reliable and effective support to their assessment activities. In particular, some considerations will be made regarding the effect of the number and positioning of monitoring points on the tilt determination of a building façade, in order to set up simplified procedures, which are quick and easy to implement in emergency situations, at the same time guaranteeing the reliability of the results. Two types of building will be taken into account as test cases, which have different characteristics in terms of height, distance and angle with respect to the Total Station. Some considerations will be made about the aspects to be explored in future work, for the calibration of the method as a whole and the definition of all the steps of a procedure for the evaluation of the safety of a building.
The Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del fuoco Italian (Italian Fire and Rescue Services) provides the ... more The Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del fuoco Italian (Italian Fire and Rescue Services) provides the emergency verification of the static safety of buildings in urgent technical assistance and calamities. This activity also concerns cultural heritage and was the subject of a research and development project funded by the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 program. This project (STORM) made it possible to verify, with a positive outcome, the possibility of using Lidar technologies to support safety assessments in emergency conditions.
One of the main problems of emergency management in case of damage reported by historic buildings... more One of the main problems of emergency management in case of damage reported by historic buildings after an earthquake is represented by immediate damage assessment. In fact, nowadays it is not possible to use techniques other than the personal evaluation carried out by first responders. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a proper 3D imaging technique to improve damage res- torations, showing, as a case study, what has been done and what is going on in the Papal Basil- ica and the Sacred Convent of Saint Francis in Assisi, Italy.
The presentation, held in the framework of the "Jornadas internacionais de Risco de incendio... more The presentation, held in the framework of the "Jornadas internacionais de Risco de incendio no patrimonio Cultural" is aimed at giving some information about the organisation that Italy has defined in order to deal with large scale disasters involving Cultural Heritage buildings. The main topics dealt in the presentation are: the "red zone concept", how to let firefighters put in safety conditions movable and immovable objects that normally can be cared only by specific Cultural heritage experts. In such framework, innovation technologies can help first responders in assessing with more confidence the static safety situation of the buildings damaged by the earthquakes. The H2020 STORM project is helping the CNVVF in identifying the most suitable technologies to be used in the aftermath of an even.
Recent archive researches have revealed that, after the fire that destroyed in 1823 a large part ... more Recent archive researches have revealed that, after the fire that destroyed in 1823 a large part of the papal Basilica of Saint Paul outside the walls, the Engineer and Architect Luigi Poletti was commissioned by Pope Leo XII to provide for its reconstruction. During the accomplishment of the most important part of the work, carried out between 1833 and 1869, the Eng. Arch. Poletti asked the Pope to be helped in the realization of fire protection of building. The Pope then instructed Jesuit father Angelo Secchi, astronomer and geodesist of the Collegio Romano, to provide for the protection of the building. With the help of Giacomo Lusvergh, German and Italian naturalized optician and scientist, a complex of activities led to the creation in Rome of a fire-fighting service set up on the model adopted in the Napoleonic period in France. Of particular interest from the point of view of engineering innovation, however, is the design of a fire system that was to be built to protect the r...
Il progetto europeo STORM (Safeguarding Cultural Heritage through Technical and Organisational Re... more Il progetto europeo STORM (Safeguarding Cultural Heritage through Technical and Organisational Resources Management), finanziato nell'ambito del programma di ricerca e innovazione tecnologica "Orizzonte 2020", mira alla realizzazione di soluzioni innovative per determinare minacce e vulnerabilità in relazione a diversi eventi meteorologici estremi e ai rischi associati alle condizioni climatiche o ai disastri naturali, offrendo, per ciascuna criticità emersa, strategie, metodologie, tecnologie e strumenti efficaci di adattamento e di mitigazione. All'interno di STORM, il CNVVF dovrà svolgere diverse attività di formazione, disseminazione, validazione e di test, sulle materie di proprio interesse istituzionale, tra cui la prevenzione incendi. In questo ambito, è interessato anche alle esigenze che i cambiamenti climatici potranno porre in termini di modifica ai criteri di prevenzione incendi.
STORM is an H2020 EU financed project. It provides critical decision making tools to cultural her... more STORM is an H2020 EU financed project. It provides critical decision making tools to cultural heritage stakeholders charged to face climate change and natural hazards. The project improves existing processes related to three identified areas: Prevention, Intervention and Policies, planning and processes. In the specific area of the use of drones, the STORM architecture is aimed at enhancing the capacity of situation awareness through the use of sensors capable of transmitting to control rooms the most appropriate data about the ongoing emergency situation. The poster will describe the integration of use of UAVs within the overall emergency management process
The number of natural disasters is growing. A considerable number of them derives directly from c... more The number of natural disasters is growing. A considerable number of them derives directly from climate changes and generates a deep impact on cultural heritages. As a result, the need for solutions able to cope with uncertain weather conditions and increased natural disasters is getting urgent. STORM is a European Research and Innovation Action co-funded in the H2020 framework that is aimed at creating intelligent tools which will gather data from libraries, sensors and crowd-sensing techniques in order to enable cultural heritage stakeholders (e.g., the organisations which have to manage the sites) to implement the most appropriate actions in the prevention, response and recovery phases of emergencies which could impact on cultural heritages. More specifically, the project aims at addressing those risks deriving from climate change, which in the near future is going to worsen most of the present hazards, as flash floods, heat waves and forest fires. As such, the approach adopted b...
Uploads
Papers by Stefano Marsella