AI for Memory Preservation: Automated Restoration of Photographs Damaged by Floods

The floods caused by the Isolated High-Level Depression (DANA) in the Valencian Community in October 2024 destroyed and damaged hundreds of thousands of personal photographs, erasing key pieces of collective and emotional memory. Within the project Recuperar las Memorias, we present an AI-based system for automated photo reconstruction, designed to support the recovery of more than 200,000 affected images. The system integrates YOLOv8 and SAM2 for automatic detection of damaged regions, followed by context-aware inpainting to restore visual coherence. Special modules are included for facial restoration, preserving identity in one of the most emotionally critical aspects of personal photographs. The tool is deployed as a web application that enables both single-image and batch restoration, making it accessible to non-expert users. Preliminary evaluation, combining human perceptual studies and automatic metrics (LPIPS), shows consistent alignment between subjective and objective assessments of quality. This demonstration highlights how advances in computer vision can be mobilised in real-world crisis contexts, placing AI at the service of cultural heritage, dignity, and memory preservation.