SoPHIA is a collaborative project funded by the EU Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 Programme. Its aim is to promote collective reflection within the cultural and political sectors in Europe on the impact assessment and quality of interventions in historical environment and cultural heritage sites at urban level.
SoPHIA intends to make a decisive contribution to this endeavour, laying the basis for an articulated vision shared by all the stakeholders in the sector and to help define the most important challenges and opportunities in the field. In the end, SoPHIA seeks to contribute to the development of strategic and integrated European and international policies and interventions.
Specific objectives are:

• To make an extensive review of the impact assessments, research, policies and best practices related to interventions undertaken in European historical environment and cultural heritage.
• To identify gaps and main issues related to the impact assessment of interventions on cultural heritage.
• To propose shared quality standards to be required for restoration and other interventions in European historical environment and cultural heritage.
• To develop a model for holistic impact assessment of interventions on cultural heritage disaggregated in 4 main interconnected domains, social, cultural, economic and environmental, and test it on comparable observation units with similar characteristics albeit in different contexts.
• To develop a shared view within the social platform on the more important and policy relevant issues in this field for Europe in the coming years and the best way to address them.
• To produce toolkits, recommendations, an action plan and policy guidelines in this domain to support the EU’s future action in this field.