French conservation experts from multiple public and private institutions are developing an AI model to predict the impact of climate change on cultural heritage sites. Led by Ann Bourgès of the French Ministry of Culture’s Centre for Research and Restoration of France’s Museums, the project began in 2022 with two doctoral researchers, Adèle Cormier and David Roqui, who are studying three heritage sites: Strasbourg Cathedral's sandstone spire, the Bibracte archaeological site, and a future coastal site. The team is gathering climatic and material deterioration data to train an AI to correlate weather patterns with physical degradation, using open-source methodology so the tool can be adopted globally.
This matters because heritage restorers and archaeologists currently lack precise, site-specific tools to quantify how climate change will accelerate deterioration over the next 50 to 100 years. By creating an AI that can process diverse data types—from satellite weather readings to photographs of cracks—the project addresses a critical gap in conservation planning. The open-source approach ensures that even small heritage sites worldwide could eventually benefit from predictive modeling, making this a potentially transformative resource for cultural heritage preservation in an era of rapid environmental change.