MOLAB (MObile LABoratory) is a world-class distributed infrastructure which consists of key laboratories across 10 European countries providing coherent access, under a unified management structure, to a set of portable equipment and related competencies, for in-situ non-destructive measurements of artworks, collections, monuments and sites. The analysis may be orientated towards art‐historical or archaeological questions (execution techniques, dating, under‐drawings in paintings etc.; assessing the state of conservation of artefacts; determine or test the optimal preservation strategy to slow down alteration processes; monitoring conservation treatments and informing a risk assessment. All the techniques are non-invasive, so there is strictly no sampling or contact with the surface under exam. The motivation for MOLAB arises from the fact that a large number of historical European patrimony consists of monuments, sculptures, buildings and that cannot be moved from their location and this implies that non-material studies on these objects must be necessarily carried out in-situ, through portable instrumentation. Also, even in the case of movable patrimony (such as paintings, ceramics, gems, manuscripts, etc.), it can often be quite difficult, if not impossible, to move such works to a laboratory, due the high risks and costs connected with their transportation and often fragile state. An advantage of MOLAB is that the measurements, being carried out in-situ, lead to real-time results, permitting an immediate discussion of the recorded data.
What is new. Now MOLAB includes mobile laboratories with unique competencies in-ground and aerial remote sensing as a key to enable multidisciplinary research in new fields and application scenarios such as i) exploration, survey and documentation of archaeological interests, ii) preventive and landscape archaeology, iii) interpretation, documentation and diagnosis of the state of conservation of built and monumental heritage.
Platform coordinator
Name: Costanza Miliani
Phone: +39 075 5855639
Email: costanza.miliani@cnr.it