(by Francesco Pagano, Director of Aidr and Head of IT services Ales spa and Scuderie del Quirinale) While awaiting the end of this period of self-imprisonment, it is important to start wondering what will be the ways to go through the so-called "phase two" of the pandemic by coronavirus, that is, in which our country will be able to start moving towards the "normality" that we all desire.
What awaits us, however, will probably be a "normal" different from what we were used to. According to what we read in the press and the opinions of experts, we will find ourselves having to live with Covid-19 for some time.
And if technology has allowed us to "buffer" in some way the inability to use our cultural heritage in these emergency weeks, thanks to the numerous initiatives that have allowed for example to enjoy virtual visits through the Web, in the near future we will have to find ways to exploit innovation to ensure a new way of managing access to museum bodies and all those physical spaces that will have to be crossed, necessarily, using caution that we are not used to having.
In addition to the desire for a return to normality that everyone hopes for, considering the perspective is also necessary for a more "prosaic" reasoning linked to the economic sustainability of the entities themselves, which without the revenues from the visits could soon find themselves in serious difficulty in finding resources also necessary for those activities aimed at preserving the artistic heritage entrusted to them.
But how will it be possible to guarantee regulated access to museum spaces without creating problems for the public? The first aspect certainly concerns the management of accesses which must necessarily be managed through reservations. The easier and more immediate the booking procedure, for example through the use of a mobile app and the digitization of tickets, the more attractive the system will be for the general public.
The adoption of new technologies will be fundamental, however, also in the management of the visit itself to ensure the maintenance of those minimum distances that we will have to keep for some time as a prevention tool. For this purpose, the solutions, at the technological level, can be the most varied: from the use of surveillance cameras combined with artificial intelligence algorithms to get to the use of RFID proximity readers.
However, letting every single entity move independently is unimaginable. To achieve the objective of creating a safe visit method, users must in fact develop a certain familiarity with the procedures and any tools necessary to adapt.
Without the definition of a standard applicable to all, in fact, the practicality and the same effectiveness of these tools are likely to be scarce to say the least and generate more confusion than advantages.
Therefore, an overall elaboration path is needed, which as hoped by Minister Dario Franceschini (Minister for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism) and his counterparts from Germany and Spain in a joint declaration taken from the media, can be shared. also at European level to ensure the widest possible adoption field.