“War-scapes testimonial gradient”: a multi-criteria approach as a proactive tool for choosing future practices of enhancement

The vastness of the material permanences of the Great War within contemporary landscapes imposes on the stakeholders that want to take care of them the need to identify new operational tools capable to calibrate a map of intervention priorities. This contribution presents the elaboration of a methodological approach capable of dealing with the complexity of this fragile heritage through a knowledge-based skeleton useful for comparing different territorial areas by assigning them different "testimonial gradients" with respect to the level of knowledge of specific pre-established indicators. Thanks to a multi-criteria analysis matrix based on analytical-hierarchical processes (AHP) weights and quantities are assigned to the indicators and subindicators under analysis thus highlighting, for each analyzed area potentialities and criticalities that become indispensable for planning future enhancement interventions. This paper presents the application of this innovative approach on the permanences of three fortified systems on the Vezzena Plateau in Trentino (Italy), along what, a hundred years ago, was the former first border line between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This study case was sponsored by the Superintendency of the Autonomous Province of Trento that needed an analytical tool to identify on which of these three areas, currently in a state of neglect and degradation, to program future conservation and enhancement plans.