Climate change and natural hazards pose significant threats to heritage sites, with major impact on people's livelihoods and connected communities. Increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather conditions have a substantial detrimental impact on cultural heritage (CH), both on tangible assets (e.g. monuments, historic buildings, and sites), and intangible elements (e.g. knowledge, cultural practices, and oral traditions) that are inherited from the past. Factors contributing to the deterioration of heritage sites are attributed to sea level rise, ocean acidification, intensified storm activity, temperature elevation, and coastal erosion that put significant stress on the stability, preservation, conservation, and security of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage in underwater and coastal environments.However, limited knowledge exists on risk assessment and protective measures actions to mitigate these multiple hazards and complex risks posed by climatic conditions and natural disasters. This highlights the need for more integrated assessments that consider the collective impacts of various hazards on cultural heritage and their corresponding protection systems. It is therefore of significant importance to employ and test the effectiveness of novel measures across a spectrum of heritage sites threatened by various climatic conditions and risks.Addressing these two points, the THETIDA project focuses on the development of a preventive conservation strategy that includes monitoring, risk preparedness and management, for underwater and coastal CH. The main objective is to identify and ward off climatic risks and natural hazards and promote adaptation, reconstruction, and other post-disruption strategies to restore normal conditions to the historic area. THETIDA project also emphasizes long-term strategic approaches to adapt to climate change and to wield policy tools for economic resilience. This is achieved through an interdisciplinary team of researchers, experts and practitioners that will develop, test and validate an integrated multiple heritage risk assessment and protection system with evidence-based monitoring frameworks, innovative tools and instruments and through participatory and crowdsourcing processes. The project actions will be implemented at seven pilot sites across the European continent, linking social innovations with state-of-the-art technologies, including ICT and IoT harmonised tools, to enhance resilience of underwater and coastal heritage sites.Acknowledgement:This research has been funded by European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under THETIDA project (Grant Agreement No. 101095253) (Technologies and methods for improved resilience and sustainable preservation of underwater and coastal cultural heritage to cope with climate change, natural hazards and environmental pollution).

The THETIDA project addresses climate change threats, utilizing a holistic approach to safeguard Europe’s coastal and underwater cultural heritage. Employing environmental modeling for specific climate change scenarios, the project conducts quantitative and qualitative impact assessments, combining environmental and pollution analyses at seven pilot sites across Europe. The developed and deployed technology includes sensors, satellite image processing, smart buoys, AUVs, wearables and crowdsourcing applications supported by ocean forecasting and hazard mapping services. The obtained datasets inform adaptive strategies through a Decision Support System with enhanced visualization capabilities and aim to support sustainable plans for cultural heritage preservation and resilient, climate-neutral policies.

CORAL (Catamaran fOr UndeRwAter expLoration) is a compact, unmanned catamaran-type vehicle designed and developed to assist the scientific community in exploring marine areas such as inshore regions that are not easily accessible by traditional vessels. This vehicle can operate in different modalities: completely autonomous, semi-autonomous, or remotely assisted by the operator, thus accommodating various investigative scenarios. CORAL is characterized by compact dimensions, a very low draft and a total electric propulsion system. The vehicle is equipped with a single echo-sounder, a 450 kHz Side Scan Sonar, an Inertial Navigation System assisted by a GPS receiver and a pair of high-definition cameras for recording both above and below the water surface. Here, we present results from two investigations: the first conducted in the tourist harbour in Pozzuoli Gulf and the second in the Riomaggiore-Manarola marine area within the Cinque Terre territory (Italy). Both surveys yielded promising results regarding the potentiality of CORAL to collect fine-scale submarine elements such as anthropic objects, sedimentary features, and seagrass meadow spots. These capabilities characterize the CORAL system as a highly efficient investigation tool for depicting shallow bedforms, reconstructing coastal dynamics and erosion processes and monitoring the evolution of biological habitats.

Larsen & Toubro, INDIA in conjunction with Edgelab Srl, ITALY have developed the Amogh Survey System, a new 1000m class autonomous underwater vehicle aimed at conducting planned hydrographic surveys using multiple sensors (payloads) namely, Multi-Beam Echo Sounder (MBES), Side Scan Sonar (SSS), Sub-Bottom Profiler (SBP), Underwater High resolution Camera and Conductivity Temperature and Depth (CTD) / Sound Velocity Profiler (SVP). Amogh’s survey system complies with the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) Standard for Hydrographic Surveys S44 and IMO regulations for safety of navigation. The Amogh Survey System includes an electro-hydraulic telescopic launch frame and launch ramp capable of conducting AUV recovery operations by Nose-Line Recovery. The system can be installed on-board commercial and military survey ships, as well as vessels of opportunity such as barges and pontoons with minimal modifications. It can also be launched and recovered from the pier. It consists of a self-contained, air conditioned storage container with adequate space to additionally conduct maintenance of the vehicle.We present the vehicle design, system architecture, realization and results of sea trials performed in the Mediterranean Sea, off the west coast of Italy.

Sea shipping routes have become very crowded and this, coupled with an always increasing demand of oil based products, contributes to the increase in maritime traffic density, as a consequence pollution risks have increased. Therefore, it is important to have information systems capable of detecting and monitoring environmental endangering situations like oil spills at sea. In this paper, a Marine Information System, acting as an integrated and inter-operable monitoring tool is proposed and discussed. The discussion focuses on a system that is able to integrate different data acquired from various electronic sensors, and that is inter-operable among marine operators and ship traffic authorities. The available data on the system are all geo-referenced, and flows seamlessly through the system, where they are integrated in a consistent and usable manner. An important result of this integration is the capability to produce a collection of proactive services such as Decision Support ones, which can be used to improve the functionalities and facilities concerned in an intervention operation. Through the implementation of these services, we aim to demonstrate how an efficient environmental management system could benefit from being supported by a Marine Information System that can provide the dynamic links between different data, models and actors.

The paper summarizes the main results achieved during the three-year European FP7 ARROWS project (ARchaeological RObot systems for the Worlds Seas). ARROWS concluded at the end of August 2015 and proposed to adapt and develop low-cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) technologies to reduce the operational cost of typical underwater archaeological campaigns. The methodology used by ARROWS researchers identified archaeologists requirements for all the phases of a campaign. These were based on guidelines issued by the project Archaeology Advisory Group (AAG), which comprised of many European archaeologists belonging to the consortium. One of the main goals of the ARROWS project was the development of a heterogeneous team of cooperating AUVs; these comprised of prototypes developed in the project and commercially available vehicles. Three different AUVs have been built and tested at sea: MARTA, characterized by flexible hardware modularity for easy adaption of payload and propulsion systems, U-CAT, a turtle inspired bio-mimetic robot devoted to shipwreck penetration and A-Size AUV, a small light weight vehicle which is easily deployable by a single person. The project also included the development of a cleaning tool for well-known artefacts and maintenance operations. Results from the official final demonstrations of the project, held in Sicily and in Estonia during Summer 2015, are presented in the paper as an experimental proof of the validity of the developed robotic tools.

Smart cities are getting essential to drive economic growth, increase social prospects and improve high-quality lifestyle for citizens. To meet the goal of smart cities, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have a key role. The application of smart solutions will allow the cities to use ICT and big data to improve infrastructure and services (i.e. network efficiency, protection from contamination, etc.). In the water sector, the integration of smart meters and sensors coupled with cloud computing and the paradigm of “divide and conquer” introduces a novel and smart management of the water network allowing an efficient online monitoring and transforming the traditional water networks into modern Smart WAter Networks (SWAN). The Ctrl+SWAN (Cloud Technologies & ReaL time monitoring+Smart WAter Network) Action Group (AG) was created within the European Innovation Partnership on Water, in order to promote innovation in the water sector by advancing existing smart solutions. The paper presents an update of a previous work on the state of the art on the best On-line Measuring Sensors (OMS) already available on the market and innovative technologies in the Research and Development (R&D) phases.

Armando Di Nardo (1,4,8), Anna Di Mauro (1,4,11), Romeo Bernini (1,14), Luca Sanfilippo (1,18), Osvaldo Paleari (17), Dragan Savic (1,2), Giovanni Francesco Santonastaso (1,4), Michele Cocco (1,7), Philippe Cousin (1,20), Hans Wouters (1,19), Manuel Rodriguez-Pinzon (16), Raffaele Velotta (1,6), Chrysi Laspidou (1,3), Marco Doveri (1,13), Bouabid El Mansouri (1,10), Eva Martínez Díaz (1,5), José Manuel Rodriguez-Varela (1,12), Roberto Greco (1,4), Andrea Scozzari (1,15), Evina Katsou (9), and the others authors

Hydrocarbon pollution represents one of the most serious issues for the health of the extremely fragile marine ecosystem, and strategies for its monitoring have been growing in number and complexity in the last decades. Therefore, the realization of systems able to detect the presence of pollutants in the marine environment has become extremely complex, involving different figures and integrated technologies. This paper presents an innovative model for the real-time assessment of pollutants on the sea surface based on a network of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which are able to sail the sea surface, equipped with sensors capable of detecting volatile organic compounds produced by hydrocarbons. In particular, within this context, an AUV equipped with an electronic nose-like system is proposed, with the sensors employed that were characterized both on the laboratory bench and at sea. The results obtained confirmed the feasibility of the approach proposed as well as good reliability of the data acquired, confirming the likely employment of this system within an integrated marine monitoring tool.

Hydrocarbon pollution represents one of the most serious issues for the health and entirety of the extremely fragile marine ecosystem, thus, the strategies for its monitoring have been grown in number and complexity in the last decades. Therefore, the realization of systems able to detect the presence of pollutants in the marine environment has become extremely complex, involving different figures and integrated know-hows. This paper presents an innovative model for the real-time assessment of pollutants on sea surface based on a network of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), also able to sail the sea surface, equipped with sensors, capable of detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by hydrocarbons. In particular, within this context, an AUV equipped with an E-Nose-like system is proposed, with the sensors employed that were characterized both on laboratory bench and at sea. The results obtained confirmed the feasibility of the approach proposed as well as a good reliability of the data acquired, confirming the likely employment of this system within an integrated marine monitoring tool. INTRODUCTION The Mediterranean Sea is almost completely surrounded by land, covering an approximate area of 2.5 million Km 2 , connected to the Atlantic Ocean by the Strait of Gibraltar, and representing 1% of the world ocean surface. Its average depth is around 1,500 m, with the deepest point located in the Ionian Sea, between Greece and Italy, 5,267 m under the sea surface (Barale 2008). It represents an extremely fragile and vulnerable ecosystem, being its waters slowly renewable, thus making it rather sensitive to all kinds of pollutants, especially when coming from commercial traffic of the big tankers, industrial and tourism activities (Er-Raioui et al. 2009). Pollution is more intense in coastal areas, where highly anthropized urban settlements are mainly located and maritime traffic is more concentrated. In order to preserve the integrity of this complex ecosystem, several protected areas have been created in the last decades. Such as the “Pelagos Sanctuary”, located in the Corso-Provencal Ligurian Basin, considered among the main feeding and reproductive areas for a number of cetaceans in the Mediterranean (Forcada et al. 1995; Notarbartolo di Sciara et al. 2003; Azzellino et al. 2012), and consistent with the EU Habitat Directive – Annex IV, having the aim to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment. In the last decades, in particular, petroleum pollution has become a matter of serious environmental concern Proceedings 29th European Conference on Modelling and Simulation ©ECMS Valeri M. Mladenov, Petia Georgieva, Grisha Spasov, Galidiya Petrova (Editors) ISBN: 978-0-9932440-0-1 / ISBN: 978-0-9932440-1-8 (CD) in the Mediterranean Sea and all over the world, with petroleum hydrocarbons (gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil, etc.) known to enter the marine environment through spills or leaks, as well as accidents (Mille et al. 2007; Zrafi et al. 2013). Thus, in the above cited areas, the monitoring of such pollutants is extremely critical to properly preserve the environment and the safety of animal species. To date, a number of different approaches have been employed to accomplish this difficult mission, including synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and analysis (Alpers and Huhnerfuss 1989; Topouzelis et al. 2007), hyperspectral and thermal imaging (van der Meer and de Jong 2001), hydrodynamic mathematical modeling (Martins et al. 2001), and chemical sensors for electronic nose-like systems (Bourgeois and Stuetz 2002; Sobanski et al. 2006; Tonacci et al. 2015). Each of these approaches accounts for some relatively critical issues, including low detection capability during particular weather conditions (i.e. low and high wind speeds for SAR), or during particular parts of the day (i.e. at night). Thus, the employment of an innovative approach, based on the signals produced by electrochemical sensors in presence of hydrocarbons or other potentially dangerous pollutants, could represent an important development and/or a useful complement to the traditional monitoring methods, in order to improve their performances in such key-tasks for marine environment preservation. In order to perform a proper analysis of the environmental pollution state, the electrochemical sensors system, whose functioning is based on the Electronic Nose technologies, has been placed into an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), sailing on the water‟s surface, and able to ride out customized or preloaded missions depending on the user‟s needs. Thus, the aim of this paper is to display a smart system, based on the technologies of Electronic Nose, able to dynamically monitor the presence of pollutants (particularly hydrocarbons) on the sea surface. The system proposed could be employed, together with traditional methods, for a complete and exhaustive analysis of the marine pollution caused by hydrocarbons. MATERIALS AND METHODS The main part of the smart system based on the ENose technology has been composed by an array of sensors, placed with a radial symmetry into a cylindrical flow chamber manufactured in polymeric material. The sensors employed for this application have been photoionization detectors, whose driving force relies on a vacuum ultra-violet radiation capable of ionizing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) contained in the air overhanging seawater. Such ionized particles were then detected by a proper electronics, placed inside (a pair of electrodes) and outside (electronic board) the sensor and producing an output signal somehow proportional to the concentration of VOCs present in the air. One of the main advantages of this system lied in the fact that such sensors were not responsive to major air components, thus not producing spurious signals possibly due to such a similar contamination of the sample drawn. The air inlet and outlet have been represented by a smart system of tubes, micropumps and valves, able to sample a given amount of air through an aspiration cone within a single analysis cycle, normally lasting 6 minutes overall (1 minute of air intake and 5 minutes for purging the system), and then releasing the air analyzed by an air outlet conceived to be connected to a hose external to the AUV. The integration within the AUV was another pivotal step that was performed in the design phase of the system described. The choice made was in favor of the modularity of the system, and the “E-Nose” payload was designed in the way it could be integrated but also to be detached from the remainder of the AUV when not necessary. Thus, all the cables and electronic components were connected with the remaining section of the vehicle, in order to ensure the possibility to be externally supplied and to reduce as much as possible the eventual inconvenience due to the displacement of the internal parts of the payload. The AUV (Figure 1) is composed of a central body, with an area reserved for a payload (320 mm in length, 110 mm in diameter) – the E-Nose for this purpose – with the possibility to be integrated with the external module when needed. The present system was reduced in dimensions and weight when compared to a similar system previously described (Tonacci et al. 2015). Figure 1: 3D rendering of the AUV with the Electronic Nose system The sampling and sensor chamber were resized in order to be placed into the payload compartment (113.6 mm 3 of volume for the sampling chamber, 127.2 mm 3 for the sensor chamber), while the pumps were dimensioned to be able to carry on the minimum air flow necessary for the VOCs analysis (the diameters of the hoses were 4 mm) (Figure 2). Figure 2: 3D rendering of the Electronic Nose system payload The control, sampling and analysis sections were placed within the payload compartment, together with the battery pack (14.4 V @ 5000 mAh), while the only part interfaced with the exterior was represented by the two tubes for air inlet and outlet, linked to a pillar able to keep them high enough to detect VOCs produced by hydrocarbons and, in the same time, to prevent the water from entering the sampler and damaging the overall system. The overall Electronic Nose system layout is displayed in Figure 3, with the electric and fluid dynamic connections between its different parts (sampling chamber, sensorized chamber, electrovalve and pumps). Figure 3: Layout of the Electronic Nose system Within the AUV, the engines were placed afore and astern. Data acquired by the E-Nose system were analyzed through two Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) relying on Kohonen Self Organizing Map (KSOM) structure, based on clustering upon centroid distance (distance for each point and maximum distance from each cluster‟s ellipse centroid). RESULTS The system proposed was at first bench-tested in order to assess the responses provided by the sensors and to evaluate the optimal air flow to maximize the signal-tonoise ratio produced by the detectors employed. This latter analysis produced a clear result that confirmed the 2 l/min of air flow as the optimal air flow rate for the present application. The responses of the sensors in presence of hydrocarbons‟ dilutions was evaluated in terms of minimum detectable quantity of the various substances analyzed. In particular, a concentration of 100 ppm of the different hydrocarbons employed (gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel and crude oil, often considered as the most frequently present compounds in polluted sea, according to Mille et al. 2007 and Zrafi et al. 2013) was clearly detected by the system. After this initial characterization, the system, integrated into the AUV, was deployed into seawater and used for marine monitoring purposes. The data gathered during these missions, together with the ones at bench, were employed to train two ANNs. The first of these ANNs aimed to classify the stimuli detected according to three different levels of warning („low‟, „medium‟

ARchaeological RObot systems for the World's Seas (ARROWS) EU Project proposes to adapt and develop low-cost Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) technologies to significantly reduce the cost of archaeological operations, covering the full extent of archaeological campaign. ARROWS methodology is to identify the archaeologists requirements in all phases of the campaign and to propose related technological solutions. Starting from the necessities identified by archaeological project partners in collaboration with the Archaeology Advisory Group, a board composed of European archaeologists from outside WS, the aim is the development of a heterogeneous team of cooperating AUVs capable of comply with a complete archaeological autonomous mission. Three new different AUVs have been designed in the framework of the project according to the archaeologists’ indications: MARTA, characterized by a strong hardware modularity for ease of payload and propulsion systems configuration change; U-CAT, a turtle inspired bio-mimetic robot devoted to shipwreck penetration and A_Size AUV, a vehicle of small dimensions and weight easily deployable even by a single person. These three vehicles will cooperate within the project with AUVs already owned by ARROWS partners exploiting a distributed high-level control software based on the World Model Service (WMS), a storage system for the environment knowledge, updated in real-time through online payload data process, in the form of an ontology. The project includes also the development of a cleaning tool for well-known artifacts maintenance operations. The paper presents the current stage of the project that will lead to overall system final demonstrations, during Summer 2015, in two different scenarios, Sicily (Italy) and Baltic Sea (Estonia).

During the Costa Concordia emergency case, regional, subregional, and relocatable ocean models have been used together with the oil spill model, MEDSLIK-II, to provide ocean currents forecasts, possible oil spill scenarios, and drifters trajectories simulations. The models results together with the evaluation of their performances are presented in this paper. In particular, we focused this work on the implementation of the Interactive Relocatable Nested Ocean Model (IRENOM), based on the Harvard Ocean Prediction System (HOPS), for the Costa Concordia emergency and on its validation using drifters released in the area of the accident. It is shown that thanks to the capability of improving easily and quickly its configuration, the IRENOM results are of greater accuracy than the results achieved using regional or subregional model products. The model topography, and to the initialization procedures, and the horizontal resolution are the key model settings to be configured. Furthermore, the IRENOM currents and the MEDSLIK-II simulated trajectories showed to be sensitive to the spatial resolution of the meteorological fields used, providing higher prediction skills with higher resolution wind forcing.

The Thesaurus Project, funded by the Regione Toscana, combines humanistic and technological research aiming at developing a new generation of cooperating Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and at documenting ancient and modern Tuscany shipwrecks. Technological research will allow performing an archaeological exploration mission through the use of a swarm of autonomous, smart and self-organizing underwater vehicles. Using acoustic communications, these vehicles will be able to exchange each other data related to the state of the exploration and then to adapt their behavior to improve the survey. The archival research and archaeological survey aim at collecting all reports related to the underwater evidences and the events of sinking occurred in the sea of Tuscany. The collected data will be organized in a specific database suitably modeled.

The ability to remotely detect and monitor oil spills at sea is becoming increasingly important due to the high demand of oil based products. As a consequence, shipping routes are becoming very crowded and the likelihood of oil slicks occurring is also increasing. In this frame, a fully integrated remote sensing system Can act as a valuable monitoring tool. We propose an integrated and interoperable system able to monitor ship traffic and marine operators, using sensing capabilities from a variety of electronic sensors, along with geo-positioning tools, and through a communication infrastructure. Our model is capable of transferring data, freely and seamlessly, between different elements of the information systems (and their users). In this way different data are brought together, easily and in a consistent and usable form, in order to facilitate dynamic links between different models and analytical processes.

The THESAURUS project (2011-2013) is financed by Regione Toscana (Italy) in the framework of the “FAS” program 2007-2013 under Deliberation CIPE (Italian government) 166/2007. The overall goal of THESAURUS project is to develop multidisciplinary methodologies and technologies to detect, catalogue and document underwater artifacts and wreckage with archaeological and ethno-anthropological value. In particular, specially designed Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) will be used to systematically explore the sea floor in a co-operative way, by collecting and analyzing in real time heterogeneous data from acoustic, optical and magnetic sensors with the aim of promptly detecting objects of interest. Data recorded from AUVs missions will also be an-alyzed and integrated off-line, by building large-scale sea-floor maps and 3D reconstructions for granting virtual access to underwater sites.

The ability to remotely detect and monitor oil spills at sea is becoming increasingly important due high demand of oil based products. As a consequence, shipping routes become much busier and the likelihood of slicks occurring will also increase. If applied correctly, an integrated remote sensing system can act as a beneficial monitoring tool. The integrated system should monitor ship traffic and marine operators using a sensing capability made of electronic sensors, geopositioning tools, and a communication infrastructure network. In this paper, based on the concept of dynamic risk, we propose a new model that should account in an unique scenario two different classes of data correspondent, in one case to possible sources of oil spill pollution events, and in the other one case to real time sensing monitoring. We name this model Geomatrix. Its successful implementation could involve a reduction of the costs for an effective real time monitoring of large marine areas, including Oceans.

Global climate changes and global warming influence the marine environment. Warming of the sea water may result in excessive algae blooming. A novel ZigBee based buoy platform was developed, that allows temperature monitoring with high spatial resolution. Each buoy appears as a node in a large network - direct communication with the network coordinator is not needed thus powerful tranmitters can be substituted by relatively low power ZigBit amp modules [Meshnetics]. First prototypes were manufactured and undergo now an extensive field test in the Tyrrhenian Sea (Italy).