ANCHISE - ‘Applying New solutions for Cultural Heritage protection by Innovative, Scientific, social and economic Engagement’ aims at offering to European societies efficient methods, knowledge and toolkit to enhance the protection of cultural heritage against looting and illicit trafficking. Crossing the methodology of networking that has proved its efficiency in the H2020 NETCHER project with the innovative results of new technologies developments (3D/photogrammetry for site monitoring, data engineering and AI for border control object identification and heritage collection protection, spectral fluorescence signature for object authentication), ANCHISE will create an operational set of tools applicable for European contexts and replicable in other situations abroad. The aim of the project is to bring coordinated solutions to the key existing needs in the domain of Cultural heritage protection: 1) Understand, 2) Prevent, 3) Act, 4) Repair. ANCHISE will consist of: 1) a hub of social science, politics and economics (for in-depth results likely to lead to structural evolutions in heritage protection), 2) a large-scale evaluation of technologies and needs, 3) a toolkit of innovative solutions, 4) pilot experimentation areas (museums, border control, archaeological sites), and 5) a unique and wide network of practitioners. 9 demonstrations will involve at list 150 practitioners. Guidelines and procedures on the use of ANCHISES tools will be largely disseminated (INTERPOL, PANDORA, institutions in charge of cultural heritage). The Consortium is a strong partnership of leading stakeholders in the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural objects: companies (PARCS, ICONEM, INOV), research centres (FRAUNHOFER, ICCS, Cyprus Institute), universities (French School at Athens, University Lyon 2, University of Poitiers, EUI Florence, Cyprus University of Technology), practitioners (France’s National Police College, ICOM), and associations (Michael Culture).

Europe urgently needs to restore and intensify its engagement with its past. Time Machine will give Europe the technology to strengthen its identity against globalisation, populism and increased social exclusion, by turning its history and cultural heritage into a living resource for co-creating its future. The Large Scale Research Initiative (LSRI) will develop a large-scale digitisation and computing infrastructure mapping millennia of European historical and geographical evolution, transforming kilometres of archives, large collections from museums and libraries, and geohistorical datasets into a distributed digital information system. To succeed, a series of fundamental breakthroughs are targeted in Artificial Intelligence and ICT, making Europe the leader in the extraction and analysis of Big Data of the Past. Time Machine will drive Social Sciences and Humanities toward larger problems, allowing new interpretative models to be built on a superior scale. It will bring a new era of open access to sources, where past and on-going research are open science. This constant flux of knowledge will have a profound effect on education, encouraging reflection on long trends and sharpening critical thinking, and will act as an economic motor for new professions, services and products, impacting key sectors of European economy, including ICT, creative industries and tourism, the development of Smart Cities and land use. The CSA will develop a full LSRI proposal around the Time Machine vision. Detailed roadmaps will be prepared, organised around science and technology, operational principles and infrastructure, exploitation avenues and framework conditions. A dissemination programme aims to further strengthen the rapidly growing ecosystem, currently counting 95 research institutions, most prestigious European cultural heritage associations, large enterprises and innovative SMEs, influential business and civil society associations, and international and national institutional bodies.