The Ministry of Culture joins the GovTech Lab open innovation programme with an AI initiative for monitoring cultural heritage
The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine has joined the GovTech Lab programme by GGTC Kyiv, within which it will work on an innovative solution for automated monitoring of cultural heritage sites using artificial intelligence and satellite data.
The initiative is designed to help the state detect damage to monuments, the consequences of shelling, illegal construction and earthworks, and other changes around cultural heritage sites more quickly. Modern technologies will make it possible to move from mostly manual monitoring to automated analysis of remote sensing data and satellite imagery.
Today more than 149,000 cultural heritage sites are on Ukraine's state register. Many of them are located in remote areas, in temporarily occupied territories or near combat zones, which makes regular physical inspection much more difficult. At the same time, the war causes systematic destruction of cultural heritage and increases the risk of illegal interference within the territories of monuments and their protection zones.
The project plans to create an AI solution that can automatically analyse satellite images, detect changes around monuments, record damage and destruction, send alerts to the responsible authorities, produce analytical reports and interactive risk maps, and provide information support for management decisions.
Such a solution is expected to raise the level of protection of cultural heritage, make more efficient use of human and budget resources, ensure continuous monitoring of the condition of monuments and build a reliable body of evidence of damage. The project also has the potential to become one of the first examples in Europe of the systematic use of artificial intelligence and satellite technologies to protect cultural heritage.
The Ministry's initiative has already made it to the semi-finalists of the second cohort of GovTech Lab, having met the selection criteria. The final selection stage is ahead, after which the five best government challenges will be chosen. If the project passes the final selection, the team will work with innovators engaged by the programme, and with its funding, on developing an AI system for monitoring cultural heritage, which could eventually be integrated into the digital infrastructure of heritage protection and scaled up nationally.
On Tuesday, 28 July, representatives of the Ministry took part in the Partnership Briefing event “Building GovTech partnerships: government and business”, where they presented details of the initiative to potential partners for the pilot project.
The GovTech Lab open innovation programme in government technology by the Global Government Technology Centre (GGTC) Kyiv is implemented with the assistance of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the World Economic Forum, and with the support of the Swiss-Ukrainian EGAP programme implemented by the East Europe Foundation.
