This joint venture aims to develop a new service to support of cultural heritage protection and preservation in conflict areas.

We use a combination of space-based and in-situ Earth observations, as well as citizen-driven intelligence.

This service will include monitoring of deterioration, demolishment, explosions, pollution and other damages to tangible and intangible cultural heritage in a conflict and post-conflict context. Cultural heritage managers and decision makers in the public and private sector will benefit from this service.

Civic engagement is paramount to our approach: citizens will both contribute and benefit from the service.

Cultural heritage has a universal value for humanity. We feel the need to safeguard this common good particularly for those communities living in conflict areas.

Copyright © BLB and Web2Learn

This is a joint venture of BLB and Web2Learn

Bente is the owner of BLB, a Norwegian research and consultancy company facilitating the translation of Earth observations to science, application and services across multiple sectors incl climate change, cold regions, ocean, agriculture, disaster risk reduction to mention a few. Bente has been contributing to the Group on Earth observation for nearly two decades across the many activities in the GEO work programme as well as its governing bodies. She is an expert on data sharing and data management principles.

Katerina is a recognised researcher on open, social and digital learning. She is the director of Web2learn, a research and development company in Greece with over 10 years of activity in international projects in the area of digital education and training, open and citizen science.

Our engagement in actions aimed at safeguarding Ukrainian cultural heritage has been constant since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war. In particular, we have developed as well as participated in a series of actions that are presented here below:

1. In May 2024, Space4CC was selected as one of the top 10 finalists in the Ukraine Heritage Edition of Hatathon 5.0: Heritage. Strength. Innovations.
2. In November 2023, Space4CC participated in the 4th edition of DigiEduHack, tackling the challenge “University Students Using Space Data to Protect Ukrainian Cultural Heritage”.
3. In October 2023, Space4CC advanced during the NASA Space Apps Challenge in Dnipro, Ukraine, integrating NASA’s Earth observation products to enhance our solution in the world’s largest hackathon with over 57,000 participants.
4. In December 2023, Space4CC held a webinar titled “Impact of War on Cultural Heritage Studies in Ukraine: Capturing Changes, Exploring Tools”, focusing on evaluating the war’s impact and exploring tools like open data systems, citizen science, and Earth observations.
5. In July 2023, Space4CC participated in Hatathon4.0 Ukraine Heritage Edition, furthering the efforts to protect Ukrainian cultural heritage.
6. A webinar on“Cultural heritage threats and the role of citizen engagement inside and outside universities”, on June 2022. (more info here).
7. EUSpace4Ukraine hackathon: Participation and 3rd place at the EUSPace4Ukraine hackathon with a Challenge on (Ukrainian) “Cultural heritage under threat” (see announcement here);
8. Jupyter competition: Participation at the Jupyter Notebook competition in September 2022 with the submission of an entry on (Ukrainian) “Cultural heritage under threat”.
9. EU Space Week: Our EUSPace4Ukraine team, represented by Bente Lilja Bye, was invited to the EU Space Week that took place in Prague in October 2022. More on the event here.
10. An open access collection of open innovation actions to safeguard Ukrainian cultural heritage. The collection is part of the EU-funded eCHOIng project. Collection available on github (click here)
11. EUSPA user consultation platform: During the EU Space Week on October 2022, Bente Lilja Bye acted as an expert on the Consumer Solutions Tourism & Health (EO & GNSS components) strand. More info on the session here.
12. Europeana Conference 2022: We held a session dedicated to “Open innovation in academia-society cooperation: examples of cultural heritage preservation in a crisis situation” (recording here);
13. MyEUspace competition: We submitted an idea about Ukrainian cultural heritage protection and preservation.
14. Space4CC participated in the Social Hackathon May 12-14 2023 expanding the idea developed for the MyEUspace competition
15. The National Observatory of Athens (NOA) and Space4CC established a collaboration around cultural heritage and environmental information
16. Space4CC won MyEUSpace best idea prize and presented a first demo resulting from our collaboration with NOA at the Cassini Entrepreneurship days in Prague 27-28 June 2023