The “Research programme on technologies for the conservation and valorisation of Cultural Heritage (TCP)”, also known as CSD-TCP, is financed by the CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 (Ministry of Science and Innovation) programme since 2008.

The scientific challenge is to bring together an effective way to manage Cultural Heritage that safeguards its sustainability and solves its material and structural problems, while being coherent with its original meaning. To that end the proposal is to produce models for diagnosis-valorisation-intervention in heritage elements which can be applicable to any heritage treatment context.

In order to achieve this work is centred on:

• Demonstration projects: application in specific heritage sites
• Experimantal projects: developments of methods and techniques
• Transverse activities: protocol design, participation in social and scientific policy, etc.

The diversity of disciplines necessary for a thorough treatment, like the one proposed here, of Cultural Heritage includes multiple areas:

• palaeoenvironment and archaeobiology
• geoarchaeology and isotopic geology
• contamination and palaeocontamination
• landscape archaeology
• architectural and construction analysis
• historical analysis of heritage
• documentation and recording methods
• teledetection and Geographic Information Systems
• information technologies applied to heritage
• material analysis and characterisation
• restoration and conservation technologies

The underlying strategic objective of the CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 programme is to empower national networks in order to make them competitive on an international level. With the CSD-TCP, Spain is situated at the head of Europe in heritage treatment issues.

More information regarding project activity, including annual reports and indicators.