The Cultural Heritage Open Laboratory System (CHeLabS). Unfolding a cultural heritage-driven development in science and technology

A territory, with its distinctive cultural heritage ecosystem effectively linked to the technological capabilities, represents a co-evolved system that contributes to the socio-economic growth and to a knowledge-based society. This work illustrates a new model of territorial system recently launched, the Cultural Heritage Open Laboratory System (CHeLabS), that aims at the construction of a favourable context addressing the challenge of a CH-driven development in science and technology. The concept, the inspiring principles, the vision, the activities and the implementation steps of this system are discussed, in addition to some key factors that trigger innovation and sustain knowledge building dynamics useful for shaping the future CHeLabS environment. The cultural asset is at the centre of this system, where a number of representative heritage sites and monuments are the nodes of a scalable and distributed laboratory, based on the Open Access and Sharing culture. The current and bottom-up phase of implementation of the system is described: on a web-based platform, the heritage science community is invited to participate to an interactive survey. The expected results will highlight the problems, perceived by the experts community, demanding for new knowledge and also the technological trends that could unfold effective innovation dynamics.