Validation of innovative infrastructure in support of the science in Antarctica

One of the toughest challenges in supporting science in Antarctica is to reduce the impact of the related logistics in terms of direct green gases produced or anthropic footprint left on the continent. In these terms, following also the direction the Antarctic treaty, the decommissioning of the infrastructures built in the years is an important task to consider while studying the environmental impact of the facilities established to support the research activities. Hence, a building technique which can guarantee a reduced impact on the environment and a good compromise in terms of life-span and building costs can be an optimal compromise in this direction. On the other hand, an important demand form the scientific community is for building-up facilities in Antarctica able to preserve the valued samples, as the ice cores collected everywhere in the continent; just some important examples are those from the Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice Cores project (BEOI), which intention is to study the climate in the past up to 1,5 Myears, or those belonging to the Ice Memory (IM) project whose task is to preserve for the future generations the ice from vanishing glaciers in the world with their yielded information for decades and centuries to come. Safeguarding these ice cores is the key to provide scientific advances and knowledge, that will ultimately contribute to the well-being of humanity. A technical solution to answer these questions can be the balloon ice caves, a building technique now on-going and under testing at Concordia, the Italian-French Station on the high plateau. The actual building techniques and implementations, the ongoing testing and monitoring plans, the limits and the future perspectives are reviewed and presented.