Invited Lecture – SIMULATING AND MITIGATING DYNAMIC WATER HAZARDS ON COASTAL HERITAGE VIA MULTIPHYSICS MODELING AND AI

Coastal cultural heritage sites face growing threats from extreme waves, sea-level rise, pluvial flooding and storm-induced erosion. This talk presents an integrated multi-physics, multi-scale and multi-fidelity computational framework and an AI-driven approach, developed within the EU Horizon Europe TRIQUETRA project, spanning hazard simulation, monitoring, and mitigation for heritage-bearing coastlines.

High-fidelity CFD, finite element, and coupled multi-physics models quantify flood, wave, tsunami and compound hazards-induced loading on Mediterranean heritage sites, including a submerged Roman structure at Epidaurus, the Temple of Apollo at Aegina, and the Villa Giulia cliffs at Ventotene, revealing stress concentrations and progressive damage mechanisms. Machine-learning models are further developed to forecast cliff fracture opening in near-real time from field sensor data, enabling condition-aware monitoring. Finally, new results on submerged breakwaters show that optimized, low-freeboard configurations reduce wave runup and force on heritage-bearing cliffs offering non-intrusive, culturally compatible protection.

Overall, the talk demonstrates how coupling computational hydraulics and fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, and data-driven monitoring can move heritage risk assessment from qualitative vulnerability indices toward quantitative, physics-based decision support — informing conservation prioritization, retrofit strategies, and adaptation planning for coastal monuments under a changing climate.