Knowledge Management approach for conservation of Earthen Architecture

The goal of the PRIN2005 “EAH conservation KM system” research project, funded by Italian Ministry of Research, is to establish an advanced integrated approach to conservation of Earthen Architecture Heritage (EAH) that support main design and planning of conservation actions, reducing the technical risk through suitable and compatible measures. Knowledge Management for supporting EAH conservation design process is the specific interest field of the Research Unit, from the trigger of diagnosis processes to the management of the construction site, by means of knowledge management tools. The conservation of the Earthen Architectural Heritage (EAH) is a challenging domain of competence resulting from the intersection of scientific, empirical and practical knowledge, either tacit either implicit. The relevance of the development of ontologies allowing a basic support for an heterogeneous community of practice is discussed. The research aims at developing an ontological perspective. A cooperative system of knowledge bases allows to support the workprocess that requires to recognize and to manage the inputs that are partial determined or undetermined (e.g. as external conditions, interdependence relations). The risk in a conservation program is expressed paradigmatically as a measure of the knowledge assets required to face the uncertainty in a project. The approach is expected to make advance in knowledge management field applying some specific concepts explicating and representing dynamic knowledge for action.