Relevance of Structural Conditions in the Sustainable Management and Reuse of Historical Military Buildings: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Nowadays, the management of existing historical military buildings has acquired paramount importance since, assessing the complexity and the significance of its inheritance, military strategies and standards have been changed, and structures have to be updated to meet current safety, energy, and functional needs. In Sardinia (Italy), an island characterized by a high number of historical military buildings and highly affected by the negative aspects of insularity, such as high costs for the supply of materials and energy, the development of sustainable strategies for the management of these buildings, not rarely underutilized or even abandoned, can represent an opportunity to meet current military standards and needs containing public expenses and reducing the environmental impact and additional use of land. The paper proposes an interdisciplinary approach specifically designed for the sustainable management and reuse of this historical military heritage. The proposed methodology emphasizes the aspect of structural safety, combining it with aspects related to conservation and restoration. Starting from the study of indirect sources and the acquisition of geometric/material/structural data using direct analysis and surveys, the protocol identifies a set of descriptors that defines the current condition of the building from both safety and conservation views. At the end of the process of knowledge, the index of priority of intervention is defined considering the overall state of conservation, use, and structural efficiency, to highlight the degree of urgency of the conservation or transformation/reuse processes and allow the sustainable planning of interventions on military real estate assets. The application to a case study is presented and discussed. The interdisciplinary approach has been developed within the research project IMASS-CHAIN (Infrastructure Management Support System CHAIN).