1) Introduction
The preservation of artistic, archaeological and architectural heritage represents a bench mark of the cultural development of a society. To this end it is necessary the conservation of the material components and the knowledge of those values (historical, artistic, symbolical etc) which represent the intangible aspect of the cultural heritage. These two aims can be reached by means of a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach which allows to provide information on materials, state of conservation and building techniques. To do this in the past the only way was based on destructive surveys. Today an increased awareness of the cultural value and the brittleness of artefacts and monuments to be restored do not allow anymore destructive investigations. This favoured the use of not invasive techniques based on near surface geophysics and emerging sensing and analytical techniques.

2) Session topics
The session proposal is aimed at presenting the state of art of geoscience, novel instrumentation and as well as data processing approaches to support the study and conservation strategies of the historical built heritage, monuments and artistic (movable) artefacts, such as sculptures, paintings and frescoes.

As well known, for the correct restoration of the architectural and artistic heritage an exhaustive knowledge of their status is necessary; such information stands not only in the identification of the building and material features, but also in the localization, survey and characterization of decay pathologies. Furthermore, in many cases monitoring of the structure and the surface is required, for all kind of cultural artefacts (historical monuments to artistic frescoes) in order to foresee the degradation temporal behaviour and develop a preventive conservation.
In this field, in the recent years there has been an increasing interesting on non-destructive and non invasive geophysical test methods that also allow to overcome the subjectivity arising in the choice of the number and the positions where to perform the destructive tests. Thus, the non invasive techniques are able to give a global vision of the heritage. In addition, very recently large attention is posed to the integration of the classical geophysical techniques with new emerging surface and subsurface sensing techniques (optical sensors, thermography, acoustics) as well as geochemistry for a multi depth, multi-resolution, multi-scale monitoring, considering also some techniques, such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X ray computerized tomography (CT) traditionally used in other scientific fields and recently applied to Cultural Heritage. Therefore, the sessions will be dealing with the following themes:

a) Active (SAR, lidar) and passive (traditional aerial image to multispectral/ hyperspectral data) satellite and airborne data processing for conservation, monitoring and risk prevention of cultural heritage.
b) The state of art and progress of the geoscience techniques (self-potential, ERT, GPR) in the framework of the Cultural Heritage diagnostics with a focus on the novelty of the instrumentation and data acquisition/processing techniques as well as on the presentation of experimentations/applications of high cultural interest and/or of challenging scientific interest;
b) The presentation of approaches based on the integration of geophysical techniques, stress wave tests (sonic and ultrasonic), infrared thermography for the conservation and the study of building features of monuments
c) Diagnostics for the study and conservation of artistic artefacts (paintings, sculptures, architectural decorations) based on hyperspectral and multispectral imagery, infrared reflectography, infrared thermography and other high frequencies electromagnetic techniques
d) Integration of GPR, stress wave tests with chemical and physical analyses for the characterization of materials and constructive techniques of monuments and artefacts;
e) Active (SAR, lidar) and passive (traditional aerial image to multispectral/ hyperspectral data) satellite and airborne data processing for conservation, monitoring and risk prevention of cultural heritage.
f) Recent advances in the use of NMR and CT applied to characterize cultural materials as well as their decay condition and conservation techniques
g) Geochemical and mineralogical techniques, portable and non-destructive, to analyze cultural materials such as X ray fluorescence (XRF), X ray diffraction (XRD), and Raman spectroscopy
h) Any other non destructive technique, mainly portable, which can provide information about the surface and nature of the cultural material, at a micro or mega scale (i.e. 3D rugosimeter).
3) Publication
As in the past editions, papers presented during the session will be selected for special issues of international journals: results of EGU2009 were published in Near Surface Geophysics 8/5(2010), Journal of Geophysics and Engineering 7/2(2010) and Advances in Geosciences 24(2010); results of EGU 2010 were published in Journal of Geophysics and Engineering 8(2011), and International Journal of Geophysics.
Selected papers presented last EGU2011 are now in process of being published in two special volumes of Journal of Geophysics and Engineering and International Journal of Geophysics.