Das Projekt "Multifunctional Encoding System for Assessment of Movable Cultural Heritage (MULTI-ENCODE)" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Stuttgart, Institut für Technische Optik durchgeführt. Nowadays safety, ethical, economical, security issues and the increase demand of loaning for exhibitions in transit, are forcing the Conservation Community to undertake strong initiatives against various types of mistreatment, damage or fraud, during transportation of movable artworks. Therefore the project targets to the development of innovative methodologies and instrumentation to respond to these aspects of increased preservation importance, among which to secure proper treatment, to assess probable damage and to fight fraud actions in transportation. It aims to develop a novel Impact Assessment Procedure by exploiting and providing the holographic technology advances and innovative tools for a highly secure encoding-decoding system of objects features required for sustainable preservation of movable artworks. It may apply in many functional and strategic decision-making aspects in museums operation, from routine seasonal examination of conservation state, to periodic assessment of conservation treatments and materials compatibility, to deterioration control and definition of early-induced damage, to continuous monitoring of transportation impact, to direct confirmation of originality and control of maintenance for any art object in transit. The effective proposed method relies on the original coded extraction of distinct features from the artwork under conservation, transportation and loan that characterizes the state of conservation and its originality. The coding and decoding of characteristic features is performed holographically before and after have been optically and numerically transformed for digital archiving. The archived coded data forming the signatures of the object can be compared at any later time to provide indication of alterations. The project advances the state of the art elaborating in synergy with existing methods and practices and concludes with novel instrumentation and standards for universal application and worldwide exploitation. Prime Contractor: Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas; Heraklion; Greece.