Craftsmen built Notre Dame, now it’s up to hi-tech robots and Chinese drones to save it. How will they pull it off?
- Some of the technology to be used to restore the cathedral has already been on display including China-made drones equipped with HD cameras
- The rebuilding effort is likely to draw upon expertise gleaned from disasters like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan and the Brazilian National Museum fire
As the first images of charred wreckage inside the Notre Dame cathedral appeared online on Tuesday, engineers around the world said one observation was already clear: to return the ancient structure to its glorious past, builders are likely to have turn to cutting-edge technology that many associate with the future.
Even before engineers had been able to access the deepest corners of the still-smouldering structure, design experts, preservationists and engineers were contemplating which modern technologies might be brought to bear to restore one of Europe’s most iconic structures to its fabled past.
It is a speculative exercise, they admit, but an expected one with the future of a Unesco World Heritage Site at stake.
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to rebuild the cathedral “within five years” and “even more beautifully”, and said the sad event had brought out the best in a country riven with divisions.
“We will rebuild the cathedral even more beautifully and I want it to be finished within five years,” he said in a televised address to the nation a day after the blaze. But he warned: “Let us not fall into the trap of haste.
France had over the course of its history seen many towns, ports and churches go up in flames, he said.
“Each time we rebuilt them,” he said, adding that the cathedral inferno had shown that “our history never stops and that we will always have trials to overcome”.
