CORDHISK / Memory Twins
Research software connecting community memories with cultural heritage to document knowledge and meanings at risk of being lost. Tested at the Museu da Luz, Portugal.
Request software accessHeritage · Risk · Digitisation
Heritage, risk
and digitisation.
I'm Rafael, an architect with studies in civil engineering and a researcher working at the interplay of heritage, risk, and digitisation. I connect what communities value, what threatens its continuity, and the digital tools that help document it, assess vulnerability, and inform conservation.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow
TU Delft · Delft, the Netherlands
Understand value and vulnerability.
Connect evidence through digital tools.
Connect evidence through digital tools.
Heritage values
Risk assessment
Digitisation
Community knowledge
01 / About
Three perspectives.
One connected practice.
Heritage asks what matters, and to whom. Risk asks what could be lost, and why. Digitisation offers ways to record, connect, and analyse that evidence. My work brings these perspectives together, linking material conservation with the continuity of knowledge and memory.
With a background in architecture and civil engineering, I have worked across Mexico, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. My experience spans post-earthquake restoration and seismic vulnerability assessment, photogrammetry, ontologies, and community-led heritage documentation.
At TU Delft, I am developing CORDHISK — Community-driven Digitisation for Heritage at Risk. Its Memory Twins connect community-contributed memories with interoperable metadata to document not only heritage, but what it means to people. Digital documentation does not replace conservation: it helps retain evidence and knowledge that can inform action.
About the CORDHISK project- 21
- Peer-reviewed journal publications
- 5
- Countries of professional experience
- €300k+
- Competitively secured funding
02 / Selected work
Where the
perspectives meet.
Memory Twins, seismic damage models, ontologies, and 3D documentation connect heritage meanings, vulnerability, and digital evidence in different ways. Post-earthquake restoration grounds this research in the material practice of conservation. Images open the full plates for the selected projects.
FAIR metadata with communities
A framework for documenting everyday heritage through knowledge contributed by non-expert communities, validated through a large-scale experiment.
Read the research
An ontology for urban form
Standardising urban-form characteristics across planning documents to make rules interoperable and machine-readable for the creation of 3D models.
View the project
Machine learning & seismic damage
Learning from almost 200 buildings damaged in Mexico's 2017 earthquakes to predict damage and improve parametric assessment of built-heritage vulnerability.
Read the research
Rebuilding San Pedro
Reconstruction of the San Pedro Tlalmimilulpan bell tower after its collapse in 2017, bringing together structural safety and architectural coherence.
View the project
Igreja dos Grilos
Photogrammetric reconstruction of a historic church in Porto: documenting architecture through digital models and point clouds.
View the project03 / Research
Linking meaning,
vulnerability, and data.
How can heritage values shape what we assess? How can risk analysis guide what we document? And how can digitisation connect structural evidence with community knowledge? These questions link my research directions. Selected themes appear below; the complete list includes bibliographic references and Crossref citation counts.
2026
2023
2022
2021
Co-creating heritage metadata with communities
npj Heritage Science
Urban-scale seismic information through GIS
Buildings · 13(2), 540
Seismic vulnerability of built heritage in Atlixco
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction · 74, 102909
Describing the historic urban landscape across scales
Remote Sensing · 13(10), 1879
04 / Experience
A practice
across borders.
From architecture to engineering and digital heritage: a journey across disciplines and countries.
Request CV & portfolio · EN / ES2025 — Present · the Netherlands
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow
Delft University of Technology
Memory Twins and community-driven digitisation of heritage at risk, in partnership with the University of Lisbon.
2024 — 2025 · Switzerland
Postdoctoral Researcher
WSL · ETH Domain
Urban-form ontologies and historic-site management within UNESCO's Historic Urban Landscape approach.
2019 — 2023 · Portugal
PhD Researcher · Civil Engineering
Universidade do Minho
Seismic vulnerability, GIS databases, adobe characterisation, and machine learning for damage prediction.
2018 — 2019 · Mexico
Consultant in Historic Structures
TARES · Taller de Arquitectura y Restauración
Damage surveys and structural diagnosis of 6 earthquake-damaged historic temples. Led 2 restoration projects, coordinated architecture and engineering teams, and provided on-site construction supervision.
Education
PhD in Civil Engineering · Universidade do Minho, 2023
Master in Heritage and Intervention Design · Università della Basilicata, 2018
MSc in Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions · Universidade do Minho, 2017
Degree in Architecture · UNAM, 2015
05 / Get in touch
Collaborate
at the intersection.
Working in heritage conservation, risk analysis, or community-led digitisation? Let's explore how these perspectives can come together in research, documentation, and conservation projects.
R.Eudave.R@gmail.com