The European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science (E-RIHS) is a pan-European project aiming to support research on heritage interpretation, preservation, documentation and management. The project will provide state-of-the-art tools and services to interdisciplinary research communities that advance understanding and preservation of global heritage.
Launched last March in Amsterdam, E-RIHS has been accepted into the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure (ESFRI) 2016 Roadmap, with the goal of spurring social and cultural innovation. Currently 18 European countries are signatories to E-RIHS as founding members, ten additional countries are identified as potential supporting members, and 80 research institutions are engaged in the network. Expansion of E-RIHS to institutions beyond Europe is foreseen. The process is to be developed over the next five years.
ICCROM has been invited to contribute to E-RIHS by promoting global outreach of the E-RIHS network via ICCROM’s Member States, devising strategic partnerships at international and intergovernmental levels to enhance this network, and favouring measurement of sector statistics and performance indicators.
E-RIHS will address both cultural and natural heritage – collections, buildings, archaeological sites, digital and intangible heritage – and will devise open knowledge systems to facilitate global collaboration. Using its tools, research communities will have access to distributed infrastructures in a coordinated and streamlined way, in order to advance their heritage science research through an integrated approach. Amongst its services, E-RIHS will provide access to a wide range of cutting-edge scientific infrastructures, methodologies, data and tools. It will also provide training in the use of these tools, a platform for public engagement, and access to repositories for standardized data storage, analysis and interpretation.