# Edge Computing Architecture for the Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage
## 1 Introduction  
Underwater cultural heritage (UCH) is an invaluable resource that encapsulates humanity's past, providing a tangible link to traditions and customs. Although it is under-appreciated, UCH holds immense potential for socioeconomic and tourism development, serving as a knowledge source that can positively impact tourism chains and flows. With the ocean floor teeming with artifacts, ruins, wrecks, and remains of historical or archaeological significance, UCH acts as a storhouse of human civilisation. Uncoordinated regulatory policies, the lack of adequate protection measures, the lack of suitable underwater techniques and materials, and insufficient adaptation to climate-related stressors and environmental degradation still pose significant threats to UCH. Therefore, strengthening its conservation is crucial. The 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage [1] was a significant milestone in preserving UCH. Providing a detailed framework for states to cooperate, the Convention sets guidelines highlighting the need for in situ preservation, training, data sharing, and international cooperation. The conservation challenge lies in its intrinsic demand for customisation. Each site or artifact presents unique characteristics, vulnerabilities, ecological or historical contexts, and risk factors. Consequently, a successful conservation strategy never involves just asingle approach but is rather a finely tuned ensemble of diverse methodologies. This complexity spawns distinct interdisciplinary research avenues, requiring collaboration among experts from diverse but intrinsically linked fields such as archaeology, geology, biology, oceanography, and the technology-oriented domains of engineering, marine sciences, as well as advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and the internet of underwater things (IoUT). Projects like TECTONIC [2] (Technological Consortium to Develop Sustainablility of Underwater Cultural Heritage) leverage this holistic approach, capitalising on cross-disciplinary synergies to engineer sophisticated tools, methodologies, and AI-based models for the sustainable management of UCH. This work proposes an innovative platform combining IoUT and edge computing to enhance the monitoring, localisation, and management of UCH. The platform's architecture is designed to centralise data processing through a central unit deployed on ocean buoys located near the sensor networks and heritage sites. This allows for real-time event detection, classification, and responses without relying on cloud connectivity. Keeping most processing and decision making at the network edge dramatically improves system responsiveness. It ensures the continuous monitoring and protection of sites even during intermittent cloud connectivity. The edge nodes can still cache, analyse, and act on critical data until the cloud is reachable. This makes the overall system more reliable and robust to network failures or delays. Edge computing also reduces infrastructure costs and other costs associated with high-bandwidth undersea networks and cloud storage. By transmitting only processed metadata rather than raw sensor data to the cloud, it minimises network throughput requirements and data storage needs. These nodes are equipped with acoustic communication technologies to receive data from sensors strategically located across the underwater site and from other elements such as divers or remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) as well as to measure the distance between them. These technologies, combined with edge computing, enable the triangulation and precise determination of the position of underwater assets. This integration allows for effective real-time monitoring and intervention, addressing the limitations of traditional GPS systems, which are ineffective underwater due to signal attenuation. Long-range (LoRa) technology facilitates long-range communication between the edge nodes, enabling efficient and low-power data transmission from submerged environments.