UAVs for the Study and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage: A Scoping Overview

Drones are playing an increasingly significant role in the study, conservation, and enhancement of cultural heritage. This paper presents a scoping overview of peer-reviewed work on drones in cultural-heritage research (2011–2025). A Scopus search retrieved 201 records, provisionally organised into two macro-domains: conservation (multisensory acquisition, computer-vision alerting, Digital Twins, XR for emergencies) and valorisation (geo-anchored storytelling, immersive XR interaction, AI-driven narration). The snapshot reveals a marked imbalance: multisensory acquisition dominates the corpus (45%) and appears methodologically mature, whereas visitor-experience strands together account for only 5% and lack reviews or shared metrics. Digital-Twin and XR-emergency studies are still embryonic (six papers each). The results highlight three priority gaps – multi-site benchmarks, evaluation frameworks, and cross-domain collaboration – that will guide a systematic review in preparation, whose aim is to formalise research questions and develop a unifying taxonomy of UAV methodologies for cultural heritage.