Digital Heritage. Progress in Cultural Heritage: Documentation, Preservation, and Protection

3D digitization techniques, such as laser scanning and/or SfM (Structure from Motion), are often used for recording and documenting the archaeological heritages at many sites recently. As-is situations can be easily captured by those techniques for archiving the present geometrical information. Since excavation, different research teams might have conducted investigations and/or restoration work in different periods to date. Throughout the repeated re-excavation and backfill, there may be the places where some aspect dramatically changes. The photo records taken in the past investigations sometimes look very different from the present appearance and the differences are also difficult to describe and to record objectively. This paper proposes a methodology to support the collation of past photo data and current presence by image-processing. Estimating the 3D position and the orientation of the camera which took the photo in the past, by using correspondences between the pixels on the past photo and the reconstructed 3D shape of the current scene. By making corresponding pairs of the identical feature points between the past photo and the current 3D scene, solving PnP problem gives a good estimate of the camera viewpoint in the past. By rendering CG of the current 3D scene from the estimated viewpoint of the past camera, the CG and the past photo image can be aligned and overlaid precisely on the same view. This overlaid image allows to check the temporal changes of the object with pixel-unit precision and to help the maintenance work for inspection and repair. This paper applies to the actual site of Barbar temple at the Kingdom of Bahrain and shows the quantitative evaluation capability.

Lace porcelain is a fragile type of ceramics that is used to be in fashion in 19th century Dresden artworks. It is known to break easily while manual repair is nearly impossible. Instead, we considered digital scanning, reconstruction, and 3D printing of the damaged areas towards new digital restauration methodologies. One reference case was used throughout testing the enabling technologies, and the combination of micro CT and polyjet 3D printing proved to be most useful. However, defining a proper workflow are specifically digital modeling of porcelain lace requires complex modelling strategies, especially to make it fit for 3D printing.

This paper describes a methodological workflow starting from a punctual informative Historical Building Information Models (HBIM) - derived from the geometric analysis of the construction technology of vaulted systems - used to feed an open access Geospatial Data Base based on a Virtual Hub technology. Vaulted systems, which are characterized by a variety of solutions developed across time and space, and whose knowledge is obtained during the analysis and diagnostic phases planned for preservation purposes, are mostly unknown to the public and collected information risks to be missed. This way, the chain of knowledge transfer is interrupted both for more informed future sustainable interventions and touristic purposes. The potentials offered by the adoption of a Pan European Virtual Hub to manage open data with semantic, spatial and temporal sub-setting allows to reconstruct a new framework of the construction techniques widespread across the world, permanencies and mutations to the common typologies with the contribution of skilled workers moving during the centuries across Europe. The case study of Palazzo Magio in Cremona with a rich abacus of vaults apparently belonging to a simple ‘cloister’ typology is described from the HBIM generation to data publication in the GeoDB HUB. Different Level of Detail, Geometry and Information, acquired in other Cremona Palaces, are feeding the DB and its vocabulary in a bottom-up process. The result is a contribution to the construction of an open access updatable inventory model inheriting the tradition of historical repertoires.

In the last years it has been progressively invested many efforts in the cultural heritage digitization: surveying, modeling activities, diagnostic analysis and historic data collection of architectural heritage. Such actions have been mainly acquired for the preservation process, during the restoration and construction site. Unfortunately, many of them are left abandoned in a latent status without any connection with the long life cycle of the historic architectures or connection to the dissemination. The paper presents the case of an informative model for the Basilica di Collemaggio generated on high resolution surveying (laser scanning, photogrammetric point clouds and IRT Infrared Thermography) to manage the knowledge acquired on the geometry and the collected information on materials, construction technology and decay analysis for the design and conservation after the earthquake occurred at L’Aquila. The paper illustrates the HBIM (Heritage Building Information Model) achieved to support the restoration process funded by EniServizi within the project ‘Restart from Collemaggio’. It is described the generative modelling process implemented to embody the complexity and specificity of the morphology related to the collected information on the state of the art, the sum of the current damages and transformations during the centuries, for the preservation plan of the monument. Many damaged structures as in the case of the north wall with the Holy Door and of the arched naves with the ancient pillars have been restored preserving the maximum level of authenticity of the materials and construction techniques. The HBIM of the Basilica, re-opened to the public on December 2017, is ready to a sentinel role among past present and future.

In the last years creation of as-built Building Information Modelling (BIM), and Historic Building Information Modelling (HBIM) in particular, has become a widely researched topic. In particular, the so-called “Scan.-to-BIM” procedure has received a lot of attention. This is mainly given by the fact that nowadays, terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), either static and mobile, and 3D photogrammetry are quite popular techniques to acquire building geometry raw data. However, turning a set of scans into a BIM model is still a labor-intensive and manual work. This paper presents two workflows for increasing the automation in HBIM generation. The presented approaches differ in the level of automation achieved and in the level of maturity. Indeed, while the first one presents a higher level of automation it is designed only to work in the case straight geometrical features are dominant in the scene (i.e., Manhattan world assumption holds). In addition, it is currently implemented in Matlab. On the other hand, the second one is closer to semi-automated modelling since some manual operations are still needed. However, it is implemented as a Revit Plug-in and for this reason it is more user-friendly.

An important field in cultural heritage preservation is the study of the mechanical behavior of historical structures. As there are no computer models available for these objects, the corresponding simulation models are usually derived from point clouds that are recorded by means of digital shape measurement techniques. This contribution demonstrates a method that allows for the direct numerical analysis of structures represented by point clouds. In contrast to standard measurement-to-analysis techniques, the method does not require the recovery of a geometric model or the generation of a boundary conforming finite element mesh. This allows for significant simplifications in the complete analysis procedure. We demonstrate by a numerical example how the method can be used to compute mechanical stresses in a historical building.

3D scans and 3D modeling are used to assist the taxonomy of a new unique fossil specimen of an elephant maxilla with molars heavily eroded by coastal sea waves, encrusted in extremely hard sediment, making the preparation and measurements with classical digital calipers impossible. The elephant fossil has been collected north of Poros on the coast at SE Kephallenia in consolidated fan- conglomerates and sands. The elephant maxilla is the first significant elephant fossil from Kephallenia and all the Ionian Islands. According to its dimensions and characteristics it is attributed to a new endemic island species, Elephas cephallonicus that lived isolated from the mainland 104.2 ± 18.5 ka ago. The existence of an island endemic specimen at this period in Kephallenia is in full accordance with the palaeogeographic evolution of the Ionian Islands, which is strongly indicated by the natural climatic changes during the last hundred thousand years. The Elephas cephallonicus became extinct possibly during the last ice age.

Interactive walls have been employed in many museums with the aim to enhance the visitor experience. These are usually large in size and expensive, while their typical use is to present generic content about the museum. As a result, they may not be easily set-up at multiple locations inside a museum and serve the purpose of presenting narratives about particular exhibits. This paper presents i-Wall, an affordable interactive wall system built from off-the-shelf components and technologies. i-Wall has been designed for the Syros Industrial Museum (Greece) and presents a narrative about a particular exhibit, the Enfield E8000, which is the first electric car that reached small-scale production (in 1973). i-Wall provides information to visitors about the concept, the design, the problems, the creators and the socio-political context related to the exhibit, in an interactive way. It also allows visitors to appreciate the interior of the car as well as its functions via augmented reality (AR) technology. The design of i-Wall combines interactive storytelling, animations, projection mapping, conductive paint, touchboard and AR.

Since the deep damages occurred to the European architectural heritage after the Second World War, the conservation theory had to face with a complex issue: the partial or totally missing cultural heritage. Among the application of different solutions, the use of reconstruction of destroyed buildings became a recurrent proposal, adopted in many occasions, from Warsaw Castle to Mostar Bridge. In addition, the buildings hit by earthquakes represent a limit conditions for the application of the common procedures coming from the conservation approach. The recent intervention on the Basilica di Collemaggio, a building deeply damaged after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake, showed an interesting development of the design choices, based on a multidisciplinary approach to the preservation issue. This restoration work collects the difficulties belonging to the theoretical background met in previous experiences, like the discussion on the early 2000 reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden or the Cathedral of Noto. Moreover, respect to other cases here presented, the set of interventions characterizing Collemaggio were defined according to multi-criteria analyses supported by the different levels of details provided by the digital model of the religious complex.

The majority of digital photo collections at museums, archives and libraries are facing (meta) data problems that impact their interpretation, exploration and exploitation. In most cases, links between collection items are only supported at the highest level, which limits the item’s searchability and makes it difficult to generate scientific added value out of it or to use the collections in new end-user focused applications. The geo-temporal metadata enrichment tools that are proposed in this paper tackle these issues by extending and linking the existing collection items and by facilitating their spatio-temporal mapping for interactive querying. To further optimize the quality of the temporal and spatial annotations that are retrieved by our automatic enrichment tools, we also propose some crowdsourced microtasks to validate and improve the generated metadata. This crowdsourced input on its turn can be used to further optimize (and retrain) the automatic enrichments. Finally, in order to facilitate the querying of the data, new geo-temporal mapping services are investigated. These services facilitate cross-collection studies in time and space and ease the scientific interpretation of the collection items in a broader sense.

This paper argues that representing texts as semantic Linked Data provides a useful basis for analyzing their contents in Digital Humanities research and for Cultural Heritage application development. The idea is to transform Cultural Heritage texts into a knowledge graph and a Linked Data service that can be used flexibly in different applications via a SPARQL endpoint. The argument is discussed and evaluated in the context of biographical and prosopographical research and a case study where over 13 000 life stories form biographical collections of Biographical Centre of the Finnish Literature Society were transformed into RDF, enriched by data linking, and published in a SPARQL endpoint. Tools for biography and prosopography, data clustering, network analysis, and linguistic analysis were created with promising first results.

One of the great promises of Linked Data is to provide a shared data infrastructure into which new data can be imported and aligned with, forming a sustainable, ever growing Linked Data Cloud (LDC). This paper studies and evaluates this idea in the context of the WarSampo LDC that provides a data infrastructure for Second World War related ontologies and data in Finland, including several mutually linked graphs, totaling ca 12 million triples. Two data integration case studies are presented, where the original WarSampo LDC and the related semantic portal were first extended by a dataset of hundreds of war cemeteries and thousands of photographs of them, and then by another dataset of over 4450 Finnish prisoners of war. As a conclusion, lessons learned are explicated, based on hands-on experience in maintaining the WarSampo LDC in a production environment.

In this paper we present the design of an interactive experience journey at an ex-industrial textile factory. The aim is to enhance the visitors’ experience by engaging them in the work processes and flows that were taking place in the actual industrial environment and introduce them to the role of the artifacts and tools involved in real life work scenarios. The development is of the form of a room escaping experience developed on the basis of riddle solving. We used a number of technologies related to interactive systems design such as near field communication, physical computing, sensors, actuators and tangible artifacts.

In this paper, we simulate the incredible story of the Francois Vase, on a remarkable ancient amphora depicting Achilles and Briseis exhibited in the provincial museum Sigismondo Castromediano in Lecce, Italy. A high precision handmade replica of the original red-figure style masterpiece, 50 cm tall, from the collection of the museum in Lecce was built, fully decorated in our laboratory and then intentionally destroyed simulating the archaeological disaster of the Francois Vase. The handmade amphora (i.e. replica) was broken in 507 fragments, out of which 148 sherds (or ostraca) were offered for digital restoration through the Thickness Profile method on an on-going project.

Performance evaluation is one of the main research topics in information retrieval. Evaluation metrics in combination with benchmark datasets (groundtruth) are used to quantify various performance aspects of a retrieval algorithm. In this paper, we present the Orion Pottery Repository, a publicly available and domain specific benchmark database. It is based on open source technologies and contains a total of 160 textured 3D digital replicas of ancient Greek pottery. The dataset offered through the repository can be used for performance evaluation experiments of 3D data retrieval algorithms. Orion’s content has been classified according to a pottery shape categorization defined by an in-house developed thesaurus. The repository provides mechanisms that allow a wide range of metadata handling that are based on the CARARE metadata schema which among others it offers the ability to include information related to digitization procedures and their properties.

Heritage data is often represented in unstructured format, especially textual data. In this paper, our objective is to extract instances of predefined relations between persons and real estates from historical notices in French. Using several vector-based representations and supervised learning algorithms, we build classifiers able to achieve an F-measure between 75% to 85% for relation detection. Our results show that performances are highly dependent on the type of relation, and also on the specific evaluation metrics. Our best results are obtained using a TF-IDF vector representation with a support vector machine classifier or Word2Vec vectors combined with a multilayer perceptron classifier.

Understanding cityscapes using remote sensing data has been an active research field for more than two decades. Meanwhile, machine learning provides generalization capabilities compared to hierarchical and rule-based methods. This paper evaluates several machine learning algorithms in order to fuse shadow detection and shadow compensation methods for building detection using high resolution aerial imagery. Three complex and real-life urban study areas were used as test datasets with various: (i) kinds of buildings structures of special architecture, (ii) pixel resolutions and, (iii) types of data. Objective evaluation metrics have been used for assessing the compared algorithms such recall, precision and F1-score as well as rates of completeness, correctness and quality. For both approaches, i.e., shadow detection and building detection, the computational complexity of each machine learning algorithm was examined. The results indicate that deep learning schemes, such a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), provides the best classification performance in terms of shadow detection and building detection.

LIF measurements have been carried out on marble samples coming from the most famous quarries of the Mediterranean area. Thanks to multivariate techniques and clustering methods the most significative spectral features linked to geographical provenance have found and tested.The propaedeutic work previously carried out on the reference samples has allowed for the developing of a fast data processing method of LIF data able to provide, in quasi real time, digital images of the artworks where Italian and Greek marbles are marked differently.Starting from the obtained results, a LIF scanning prototypal system has been used to scan two masterpieces from Roman period interesting for real restoration and archaeological issues: the sculptured group, called Ares Ludovisi (collection of Palazzo Altemps) and the so-called “Two-orant’s sarcophagus”, housed in the Museum of the Catacombs of San Sebastiano in Rome.

This paper presents a novel heritage museum guide framework that provides personalized digital heritage contents to help understand the culture of immigration country. Particularly, this framework focuses on helping married immigrant women in a situation of social exclusion to easily understand a different culture heritage easily by providing similar digital heritage contents of her home country. To develop this guide framework, the following core steps are integrated: (i) collect data, such as logs, Facebook feeds, and frequency of app usage from a users’ smartphone, (ii) build users preference profiles through the analysis of collected data, (iii) display similar digital heritage contents of their home country via a head-mounted mixed reality display. From the proposed framework, we expect that the framework will make it easier to understand unfamiliar cultural heritage to married immigrant women who is having difficulty adapting to immigration. Furthermore, her children also can utilize these contents to understand and learn their mother’s culture, which can create an empathy between the mother and her children.

Nowadays, more and more cultural venues tend to utilize social media as a main tool for marketing, spreading their messages, engaging public and raising public awareness towards culture. It comes to a point where the massive of content in social media makes it a tedious procedure to contact the appropriate audience, the people that would really be stimulated by cultural information. In this notion, we assume that establishing conversations of high impact can possibly guide the cultural venues to audiences that can benefit more. These conversations usually include the so called influencers, users whose opinion can affect many people on social media; the latter usually referred to as followers. In this research paper we examine the characteristics of the influencers that can affect the procedures of a cultural venue on social media. The research is done within the scope of “CrossCult” EU funded project.

Volubilis is the major archaeological site of North Africa, built in the 3rd century B.C. Unfortunately, the city, classified as a UNESCO world heritage, is affected by several forms of degradation that threaten its sustainability and durability. The main stone of the site, the calcarenite stone, shows many deterioration patterns (sanding, scaling and alveolization) that require immediate interventions of consolidation. In this paper, we subjected stone samples to artificial aging to simulate actual alteration. Then, degraded samples have been treated with commercial nanolime (CaloSil). Nanolime treatment proved to be efficient to recover most of the damage resulting from artificial aging, but also generated a change in color. Using a less concentrated nanolime could limit the aesthetic impact of the treatment.

This contribution shows the work of the junior research group UrbanHistory4D within one year. It explains the different technical and educational approaches when working with media repositories composed of diverse historical data. The group covers technical aspects like photogrammetry, information sciences and Augmented Reality (AR) as well as humanistic topics like history of art, user case and educational studies. In detail, different photogrammetric techniques, various image repositories, a user case study and possibilities of knowledge transfer are evaluated. The main focus in the first year was the development of two prototype applications – a 4D browser interface and an AR application – supported by the different fields of studies. These applications are still refined considering the results of the varying research topics. As an outcome the contribution presents a part of the project organization which plays an important role when working in such interdisciplinary groups.

In 2013 the preliminary interdisciplinary studies for the maintenance of the facades of the Baptistery of Florence included a complete survey of the building. Like in the case of the previous most recent surveys, its geometry was studied with the most up-to-date technologies available. The 3-D model, integrated with the contributions by the other research groups, allowed new hypotheses on its construction and, in particular, a more accurate tuning of the structural models.

Documenting large scale sites like the Roman Forum, in Rome, Italy can become a mammoth task. While there is a set methodology for traditional documentation of large sites, as the one developed by Giacomo Boni in the early 1900’s, there is very little standardization in the field of digital documentation and cataloguing or making the digital data user friendly for various purposes of conservation of large site. This paper presents the methodology and techniques used by the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture DHARMA team to digitally document for the first time the Forum Romanum, Rome, Italy between 2010 till 2015.The complexity of site, terrain, and the data to be collected, were supported through three major segments that can be useful for any on-site documentation project. These include (1) Pre-site, (2) On-site and (3) Post-site methods. Employing a comprehensive approach—including 3-D laser scanning, hand measuring, photogrammmetry, and Gigapan technology—the team thoroughly documented the current state of this World Heritage site. Laser scanning was central to this effort, and the details of its implementation contributed to time and terrain effective methods are discussed in this paper. The team working on this project included architects, archeologists, computer engineers and students from various disciplines.The team’s post-site production efforts resulted, most notably, in a highly-accurate point cloud model that can be manipulated for various educational and scholarly uses. These were further transformed to create user friendly outputs including 2D drawings and 3D visuals comprising a 3D app.As many scholars from different disciplines get involved in the field of digital documentation, it becomes increasingly important to create a methodology of operation that can be described as best practices in the field for large scale sites of great historical value. This study takes the knowledge known in our field over centuries and combines the results of latest technologies to get us the best of both worlds.

In Altıntepe region of Erzincan, Turkey, a temple complex, religious buildings, Apadana, city walls, a drainage system, and many more functionally unidentified architectural remains were unearthed during the excavations which took place between 1960 and 2014.One of the most remarkable of these buildings is the temple complex. The temple, only the foundation of which has survived today, was virtually reconstructed in 2013, in the light of the archaeological data. The reconstruction was based on the imagery of the temple with towers, found on Urartian stone and bronze plates. The visualization process of the temple consisted of a number of different stages.In the first stage, the buildings in the Urartu citadel, and the latest data on the architectural plans and the debates of these were evaluated. Previous trials of 3D reconstruction of the buildings contributed greatly to our project. The details on the reliefs of Urartian, Assyrian, and other contemporary cultures, and the publications on these were evaluated and utilized.In the second stage, the obtained data was transferred to virtual environment. The temple was 3D-modeled with the help of the software 3D Max, AutoCAD and V-Ray.Then the model was textured and rendered, and the reconstruction was finalized. As a result, the architectural data obtained from the Urartian and Assyrian reliefs, and the archaeological data obtained from the field were combined, which led to a better understanding of the Urartian temple architecture.Besides, this project yielded technical data and suggestions about the reconstruction of the existing remains. In the end, the visualization of the virtual city is posted public in YouTube “Urartu Kentleri Canlanıyor”. (Serap Kuşu Urartu Kentleri Canlanıyor, https://youtu.be/geuSAGZdDuE (2014) )

In the last decades the photogrammetry has undergone interesting innovation, both in terms of data processing and acquisition mode, to allow obtaining detailed 3D models useful for complete survey and important support for the management and recovery of cultural heritage and buildings. However, despite recent developments, the main photogrammetry outputs are raster data (ortophoto and DEM) and point clouds characterized by high informative content, but they are not typically extracted automatically. Automated feature detection is yet manual, time-consuming procedure and an active area of research. The raster to vector conversion is not direct, but transformations must be performed on the input data to convert the pixel values into features. Always, segmentations are preceded by filter technique to remove noise and to improve the conversion phase. However, remote sensing data and especially UAV photogrammetry output are the most complex to treat because of their heterogeneity (presence of different objects and shapes), the nature of sensor used and the different scale. In this work we experiment new enhancement filter to improve the automatic extraction of vector information for a UAV photogrammetry results of the facing walls of eminent church, symbol of the city of L’Aquila, the” Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio”.

In this study, a survey was conducted on traditional townhouses in historic districts in Taiwan. To investigate the development process of townhouse architecture, this study used the townhouses in the historic district of Dihua Street in Taipei as research samples and conducted on-site mapping surveys and interviews. To determine the overall conservation environment of historic districts, this study conducted on-site surveys in Taipei City’s Dihua Street, Taipei County’s Sanxia Old Street, and Taoyuan County’s Daxi Old Street. Data collected during on-site surveys were analyzed and compared, and these results served as a crucial reference for this study.

The latest information technology developments have enabled the creation of novel virtual experiences favouring an increasingly higher level of information connected to the 3D reconstruction. Building Information Modelling (BIM), 3D cloud services and virtual/augmented reality (AR-VR) projects are the most applied methods to transmit the wealth of built heritage from both the geometrical and informative points of view. In this paper, we present a holistic workflow to integrate the most applied digital techniques with the aim of creating the highest quality-immersive solutions starting from an accurate 3D survey. Thanks to a new SCAN-to-BIM method that transfer the morphological and typological characteristics of the surveyed building to a shared cloud system, it will be possible to support specialists in the documentation and preservation of historical uniqueness of the basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan (Italy) with a new level of information sharing. Finally, a new digital experience based on next-generation technologies has been offered to the cultural tourism. Thanks to the development of a virtual tour that embeds different multimedia data (360° photos, photos, virtual notebook, description, video, audio etc), it has been possible to create a digital history for one of the greatest examples of the historic Italian architecture.

In the last years, new procedures on design and management of constructions, based on 3D standardised models of building elements, have been proposed. It’s the case of Building Information Modelling (BIM) applications, that, differently from CAD ones, allow to work with libraries of 3D parametrical objects (smart objects) describing geometric, structural and material properties of building elements. This methodology is based on the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) model, that represents a global standard for the building data exchange. Initially used for the design of new architectures, BIM methodology has been even more considered also for the management and the conservation of historical buildings, thanks to the possibilities of implementation of semantic information of 3D objects, guaranteed by the connection with the external database. At the same time, the lack of regular surfaces and standardised objects are relevant problems that nowadays strongly limit the use of BIM for Cultural Heritage (CH). Anyway, in recent times, the study of parameterised objects has opened new perspectives for BIM applications on historical buildings (HBIM). The present work shows the last achievements on this topic, focusing the problems derived from the application of BIM methodology to CH. In fact, the irregular shape of ancient architectural components, the wide variety of architectural languages that characterise historical buildings, the presence, sometimes, of different stratifications, are clear examples of the difficulties of implementing HBIM methodology for CH.

The interdisciplinary EU funded project INCEPTION – Inclusive Cultural Heritage in Europe through 3D semantic modelling, coordinated by the Department of Architecture of the University of Ferrara, is focused on bringing together innovative 3D modelling and ICT applications and professionals involved in different fields of Cultural Heritage. The aim is to increase knowledge, enhancement and dissemination through 3D digital models in order to promote the inclusiveness and accessibility of European assets. In this direction, a Stakeholder Panel with different skills in the field of Cultural Heritage has been involved leading the research toward effective strategies to increase use and reuse of digital models. These strategies are aimed at maximizing the impact of using digital data for cultural heritage applications involving a wide range of non-expert and expert users, starting from specific requirements for processing, managing, delivering cultural heritage information to a broad audience. A co-design workshop has been organized involving Stakeholders in order to investigate on their requirements and expectations, to obtain information that could be useful for the User Centered process of definition of INCEPTION’s main outcomes and functionalities.

Conserving and preserving the national heritage reflects important cultural stewardship and the application of ARCHES provides for robust international interoperability of this heritage. In recent years, Taiwan has promoted protection and management of historic architecture and cultural heritage, through completion of a series of databases and inquiry platforms for the cultural heritage. However, there remains a significant digital divide between domestic integrated digital data exchange performance and international standards. Hence, Taiwan is focusing on integrating multi-source digital data and database exchange services with complete ontologies and taxonomies in conjunction with the latest global developments. This study constructs ontological metadata for registration and designation of historical architecture. The ontology, based on the CIDOC CRM, is used to import the contents of the current national cultural heritage database in Taiwan to build the ontology model of registration and designation of historical architecture; and the results are displayed through the network platform. The results indicate that new interpretative data models can improve mutual exchange of information and attain the purpose of heritage educational promotion. The metadata structure is built by using the ontology model according to international standards. It provides a positive structure for conveying Taiwan cultural heritage throughout the world.

The aim of this study is to propose an application framework of HBIM for historic buildings in Taiwan with a focus on defining the components of historic buildings, component attributes, and the relationship between the components and restoration data. The information is then imported into a database and presented in a visualized model. Issues explored include definition of components and the process of generating component library for historic buildings with an emphasis on traditional woodwork. The case study is on Huangxi Academy. To generate the component library, regulations must be established to define structural components of historic buildings and the component types must be categorized. The structure of Huangxi Academy is divided into 5 areas with individual elements and the components are classified into one of the three categories, family component with parameters, family component without parameters, and custom component. In addition, for create basic visual effects for each component with data pertaining to renovation, the LOD 300 model is suggested for this project.

Advancements in remote sensing and communication technology caused a surge in new methods to capture and share information about tangible heritage. The documentation of these monuments is vital to the conservation process. However, current workflows generate an immense amount of information and often fail to properly relay the context of the scene. Additionally, the distribution of information between different stakeholders is paramount in preventive conservation.The goal of this research is to provide heritage experts with the tools to better capture and communicate information about heritage sites. More specifically, an image recording workflow is presented to rapidly acquire a series of panoramic images of the scene and present them accordingly. An online web application is created based on an existing viewer that allows even unskilled users to access the data and intuitively visit the site. The proposed application can be used to distribute information to stakeholders and supports decision makers to constitute a suitable treatment if necessary. Furthermore, the panoramic viewer and accompanying map can be used as a backbone to link to other data such as 3D models, orthographic images and so on.

In recent years, it has become common knowledge that culture is the main component for people’s creative communication as well as for the elimination of social differences and political contradictions, the encounter for people of different racial, ethnic, religious hues in a common place, leading thus to the achievement of world peace.Furthermore, the field of culture under proper management, can contribute substantially to improving the economic conditions of different countries, considering the multiple fields of production and dissemination potential of diverse cultural products which, combined with the explosive and rapid growth of telecommunications and the internet, create a considerable number of new jobs.As a result: the growing interest in this sector. However, the legal framework in which the digitization and management of cultural heritage should develop is not always clear enough or, even when it is clear, it is overturned by modern trends, which, for the sake of technology, become massive.It is therefore important to know basic relevant notions and principles for navigating and acting in a politically correct way in the vast and diverse universe of civilization: the present study constitutes an attempt both to specify the notions of cultural heritage and copyright, as well as to detect the possibilities and limitations of digitization and management of cultural heritage as defined by the current legal framework.The aim is the succinct quote of the afore-mentioned, in order that this project will serve as a concise manual easily understood and useful mainly to people not specialized in law.

The study examines the documentation of the Asinou Monument within the auspices of the H2020-SC6-R&I-INCEPTION project. The project focuses on the use of innovative 3D modelling of cultural heritage through an inclusive approach for 3D reconstruction of monuments, as well as the built and social environments over time. The project will enrich European identity by examining how European cultural heritage evolves over time. Therefore, data acquisition techniques and 3D reconstruction and modelling methodologies for data processing were examined using the Asinou Church as a case study. Asinou Church is a 11th century church located in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This unique monument contains some of the finest Byzantine wall paintings in Cyprus which date between the 11th to the 17th century. Their outstanding historical value is very exceptional and makes their documentation a great challenge for the present ICT technologies. Different multimodal techniques, such as photogrammetry, laser scanning, image processing, video and audio were used for the data acquisition of all detailed features of the tangible building and the intangible story (liturgy). Following, the information was processed to create a 3D model in order to document the church using Building Information Modeling (BIM). The church was digitally reconstructed in a 3D BIM model, where it was then processed to produce a Heritage Building Information Model (H-BIM) in order to create a prototype for a holistic documentation and further study.

Tourism is an industry that has been growing rapidly in the last few years and it is expected that it will continue to grow. Due to the evolution of technology, mobile applications are being increasingly used in all kinds of industries, being one of them tourism. Presently there are already a few mobile applications used to increase the experience of the user when visiting a place, but these mobile applications lack some important features. This paper describes the development of a mobile application with integrated routing algorithms used to increase the experience of the tourists when visiting the city of Avila, Spain. The tourist will have at their disposal real time information about all the monuments available for visit, a full set of predefined circuits with different visit times and degrees of difficulty and also the possibility to create an optimized or personalized circuit combining the user preferences such as visiting time and number of monuments to visit.

The paper presents the development and the implementation of the Art Nouveau digital repository as a part of Art Nouveau Danube project. The digital repository functions as a common content point of Art Nouveau heritage in Danube region and is connected with other cultural portals. The repository supports the research, preparation of studies and other project activities. On the other side, the repository is accessible to general public for tourism and education. It contains information on movable, immovable and intangible Art Nouveau heritage from whole Danube region in different forms (3D objects, videos, texts, photos, descriptions). Metadata sources are re-use and enrichment of Europeana metadata and new digitalization and documentation of Art Nouveau heritage in this region.

Many countries and organizations have an archive database for the digital preservation of cultural heritage. As recording cultural heritage data becomes more common, the importance of a reliable database is emphasized. However, if the verification of the produced digital heritage content is not correct, continuous errors are yielded in their applications and cultural heritage is misinterpreted. In this paper, we propose a consortium blockchain system for verifying digital cultural heritage contents. Blockchains, which have been applied to various fields recently, are a distributed data storage technology proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto. Blockchains are attracting attention as a technique for creating and storing reliable records owing to its property that it cannot be arbitrarily changed. We propose a verification system that is organized by three expert groups for assessment: researchers, curators, and artisans. The three expert groups review the digital heritage content and finally approve the content via a consensus process. To this end, the approved digital content is created as a block and stored in a blockchain record. We expect that the proposed consortium blockchain system will obtain efficiency and reliability in the screening process by leaving a reliable record of the digital content.

The integration of information and communication tools to the management of cultural heritage (CH) promotes culture-based creativity, historical learning and awareness, cultural diversity and social cohesion. However, various developing countries are facing challenges due to inadequate infrastructure to support the integration. In Nigeria, for instance, heritage sites are mainly protected for tourism purposes with little focus on the educational purposes and the broader impacts of CH within the community. This paper, therefore, describes the planning stage for the development of eDIRICA, a Web-app tool that incorporates learning, peoples’ engagement and creativity to create a new paradigm for the management of cultural heritage in Nigeria. The rationale is to document heritage sites and convert the information into knowledge through the creation of interactive learning modules, collaborative activities and events. Primary information were collected through questionnaire survey of randomly selected school students and teachers. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted for heritage managers of three CHs. The study finds that heritage education is not included in school curriculum, inadequate trained teachers and collaboration between heritage managers and school administrators. Also, young people are interested in engaging and learning about cultural heritage through digital platforms in view to contribute to the development of their communities.

Storytelling enables us to connect through narratives that create reflections on our experiences. When storytelling concerns cultural heritage, it brings forth tangible and intangible assets that characterize activities and events of the past, which may sensitize visitors of a cultural site. In this paper, we present our cultural storytelling project THREADS, a four-station installation that narrates a story of a worker in a textile factory. The system comprises: (a) a welcome station (an animation on public display) that explains the main story and challenges to visitors, (b) the fabric design station (multi-touch display) where the visitor can create a simple fabric for production, (c) the punched cards station (Arduino mechanism), where the visitor codes their initials to binary form and receives a punched card, (d) the Jacquard production station (gesture-based interface with Leap Motion and Unity), where the visitor uses the card to repair a mechanical loom. THREADS has been installed in an abandoned building of a textile industry, which operated between 1914–1986, and it is now renewed and open to visitors. A preliminary empirical evaluation of THREADS revealed that it is not the variety of technologies that engages users, but a storyline flow that retains their attention and interest.

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recognized Mak Yong’s Theater Performing Art as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of Humanity by September 2005 (UNESCO, “Mak Yong Theater”, https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/mak-yong-theatre-00167 , (September 28, 2016)). Unfortunately, Mak Yong was declared as an irrelevant form of performing art due to the prohibition in the year 1991 since the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) that took control of the state. It is viewed as being non-compliant to Islamic teachings. Various efforts have been undertaken to protect cultural heritage by collecting and documenting especially in the manifestation of intangible cultural value in order to consolidate and nurture appreciation of the cultural heritage within society. Thus, this study explores the documentation strategy approach obtainable in cultural heritage institutions on preserving and safeguarding ICH collections. A novel qualitative methodological approach was used by employing a case study design; semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine the aperture on the implementation of documenting ICH collection in the National Archives, National Museum, and the National Library of Malaysia.

The raison d’être of museums are their collections. Museums’ main purpose is to collect, preserve exhibit and interpret the objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific significance for the higher reasons of education, study and enjoyment. Museum objects are information carriers. In the Information and Communication Technologies era information about museum objects is documented, organized and communicated with the help of information systems in virtual museums. Considering the working definition of the ViMM project, a virtual museum (VM) can be considered a digital entity that, considering the museum’s specificities, enhances, complements, or augments the museum through interactivity, personalization, user experience and richness of content. The virtual museums’ context is organized with the help of metadata, the data about the data. This paper presents the main metadata standards used by virtual museums and the qualitative results of an extensive survey conducted in the framework of the ViMM project for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the main used metadata standards.

This paper focuses on the ongoing research of terracotta figurines using a 3D modeling method, laser scanning. The aim is to explore the contribution of 3D technology to the study and dissemination of this particular group of archaeological material. This is a pilot project and it concerns a small selection of figurines from the site of Plakomenos, in Corinthia, Greece. The site was excavated in 2003, by the Archaeological Ephoreia of Corinthia, and brought to light a large number of finds that belong to the archaic period (7th - 6th centuries BCE). Here, we provide a summary of current efforts to digitize the collection using 3D technology and develop a digital database/library to enhance research, dissemination and preservation of this significant collection.

The technological revolution gives innovative learning tools to the teachers and the possibility to deploy new learning approaches for deeper understanding and better demonstration of the learning content. These tools aim to engage the learners in more active participation during the perceiving of knowledge. This paper presents a new learning approach for studying the ancient Bulgarian history and civilization by realize a storytelling in a serious game. The paper makes an overview of “serious games” and their power to seek creative and logical thought, problem-solving, as well as develop a variety of skills and competencies to the learner. It also includes a short presentation of the “digital storytelling” learning method, which successfully helps instructors to motivate students learning, stimulate curiosity, and to make them interested. Finally, the paper provides details for the proposed approach and its design, mainly with respect to target learning aims, expected outcomes and plans for future improvements.

Mixed Reality (MR) applications and technologies have become quite popular nowadays. They are used in many areas (e.g. Games, Entertainment, Education, etc.). But what about Cultural Heritage? Cultural Heritage is an area that presents a great variety of opportunities for MR applications. These opportunities include storytelling (a way for visitors to learn and retain more information about the exhibitions that they explore), gamified presence (an incentivizing tool to keep them attentive during their visit) and many more. This paper discusses the creation of Cross/Augmented Reality applications for the Industrial Museum and Cultural Center in the region of Thessaloniki, and presents some early results. The region of Central Macedonia has a rich history and its Cultural Heritage is extremely significant. The local importance of Cultural Heritage can be observed in the actions undertaken by local authorities, as well as the region’s participation in European Cultural Heritage projects. The creation of Cross/Augmented applications can greatly contribute to the preservation and promotion of Cultural Heritage. These technologies are not only liable to prove very popular with the public due to their current mass appeal; they are likely to shape the Virtual Museums of the future. Overall, the main contribution of this paper is to provide the first bibliographical reference to examine the implementation of Virtual Museums in Cross Reality, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality using both ARKit and ARCore’s latest APIs.

In this contribution examples of Vietnamese cultural heritage objects of different size and importance, which were reconstructed in 3D from image sequences, in order to manufacture digital (and physical) photo-realistic replicas for an exhibition and for 3D visualisation in virtual applications for museums, are presented. For the “Treasures of the Archaeology and Culture of Vietnam” exhibition selected cultural heritage objects from different museums in Vietnam were digitised in September 2015 using image sequences taken with a digital reflex camera Nikon D800 and documented in detail by the Photogrammetry & Laser Scanning Lab of the HafenCity University Hamburg. The Treasures of Vietnam, which were never exhibited outside of Vietnam, were shown for the first time in Germany in the context of three exhibitions in the cities of Herne, Chemnitz and Mannheim between October 2016 and February 2018. The workflow from 3D object recording and modelling up to visualisation and 3D printing is described. The results of the generated 3D models and their integration in virtual tours of world heritage sites are presented.

One of the problems for archaeologic museums is having the opportunity to show most of the objects that they preserve. This is an action they can’t afford because of the limitation of exhibition spaces, the high number of artifacts they guard and/or the conditions of the real objects. Nowadays, with the use of cutting-edge 3D technologies, there is the possibility to offer virtual views of objects adding information and enhancing visitor’s experience. In this paper, an Augmented Reality app for visualizing restored ancient artifacts is presented. Based on an algorithm that addresses geometric constraints of fragments to re-build the object from parts, the AR application shows a reconstructed artifact offering the possibility for the user to visualize missing fragments. The app has been demonstrated using a real restored glass plate from the Manises Ceramic Museum, under the context of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness.

The current advances of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created new spaces for the recreational participation, mainly on virtual spaces, which can be considered as one of the main drivers of the cultural and creative production. This paper describes the experience in developing and testing an interactive 3D virtual environment for the Aeneas group in the Forum Adiectum. 3D models obtained from different sources can be included in this virtual world after a proper adaptation. We aim to demonstrate that this way of showing Cultural Heritage can motivate and facilitate people’s learning o our past rather than traditional media.

Understanding our past can determine our ability to understand the present. Many people associate cultural heritage with the ancient past and history; however, cultural heritage should be seen as a continuous tradition that lives through daily practices. In this paper, we present the details of our research dealing with one aspect of Balinese culture, the Balinese traditional communication system (kulkul), undertaken in the Indonesian island of Bali. The central aim of our project was to document, organize, and preserve the relevant kulkul knowledge for the benefit of the Balinese community, and the younger generations in particular by designing and developing a digital portal as a dynamic repository. A basic ontology of key kulkul-related concepts and terms and their interrelationships that as part of our digital portal was developed to support the semantic searching and browsing of the online portal and related resources. Much of the content for the digital portal was acquired through community-based crowdsourcing and the informants came from the different geographical areas in Bali. Members from the community were invited to contribute their knowledge to enable the online digital portal to evolve into a living repository of Balinese cultural knowledge. The significant number of digital cultural resources uploaded and the substantial growth of the kulkul ontology by the community are indicators of the success of this research project. The prototype digital portal is implemented on the cloud to facilitate elastic growth and easy user access to the resources both to read and to add content. Finally, the digital portal was made available online and extensive evaluation was carried out based on responses from selected users drawn from community by letting them use and experience the digital portal in order to evaluate the ease of use and usefulness. The evaluation results suggest that, for the most part, the users perceived the digital portal to be relatively useful and easy to use.

Collective memory characterizes the behavior of certain groups of people that form communities inside an urban environment. Quality of life, as a smart city objective, should concern the understanding of diversity, reducing alienation and preservation of people’s intangible cultural heritage. In this paper we attempt to give a first answer to such problems proposing and implementing a trustworthy mobile crowdsourcing system for a collective memory management based on the needs of users, specialists or not. We demonstrate a basic usage scenario to show the strength of the implemented services, along with a first system evaluation showing positive results.

Digitization and crowdsourcing actions are fostered by the European Union for enhancing access and citizens’ participation in culture and research. Several experiences are demonstrating how tangible and intangible heritage is moving nowadays from the concept of representing objects to that of safeguarding memories and stories related to those objects. This process means to have richer, more complex and heterogeneous metadata associated to digital objects. To leverage on such richness of information, new approaches for improving searchability/retrievability of digital resources, storytelling and reuse are developing. Also, dealing with crowdsourced contributions of various types poses new challenges for curation and preservation methods in heritage institutions and across separated repositories, where linked objects and resources lie. PHOTOCONSORTIUM, the international consortium for photographic heritage, is exploring the potential of technologies, which can make possible to enrich metadata and utilize photographic heritage at best for different purposes in education, creative industry, and research.

3D reconstructions are important media to educate and investigate history and to research cultural heritage. Against the background of networking and monitoring activities of the workgroup for Digital Reconstruction of the Association for Digital Humanities in the German-speaking area this paper is dedicated to showcase and systematise a range of current work priorities in the German-speaking countries. It aims on strengthening the image- and object-based research within the framework of Digital Humanities.

The development of global information infrastructure for digital cultural heritage is a key to ensuring the openness and accessibility of objects of such heritage on a global scale, increasing the economic, social and cultural impact of the created resources and services, and more efficiently addressing social priorities. Author shows that documentation systems play an important unifying role in the modern world of information infrastructure for digital cultural heritage. The diversity of information resources requires further study and classification, which is also necessary for more detailed documentation and cataloging of these resources. The development of systems for documenting information resources for digital cultural heritage on a global scale is continuing and has great potential in terms of systematizing data on information resources. This article examines the current state of information infrastructure for digital cultural heritage, identifies primary components and discusses their significance, determining obstacles to the formation of this infrastructure, and tracing the development of the digital cultural heritage infrastructure.

The advance of all forms of digital and virtual heritage alongside numerous heritage science and management applications have led to the generation of growing amounts of heritage data. This data is increasingly rich, diverse and powerful. To get the most out of heritage data, there is an evident need to effectively understand, manage and exploit it in a way that is sensitive towards its context, responding to its singularities, and that can allow heritage to keep up with global changes regarding expansion of digital technologies and the increasing role of data in decision making and policy development. Through conversations with industry and academia, as well as through their personal research in the field of cultural heritage, the authors have identified a need for enhanced training for data scientists to prepare them for working in the heritage sector. This paper first proposes a definition of the term heritage data, so far missing from the literature, and then presents the academic rationale behind the identified need for targeted training in data science for cultural heritage.

In conservation of cultural heritage (CCH), experts from diverse areas of knowledge work together, each of them contributing unique expertise. However, in modern dynamic multi- and interdisciplinary collaboration, new contributors often remain conservation outsiders, being deeply submerged in their own research areas with regard to their research methods, their view of hierarchy of aims and values of conservation of cultural heritage, etc. Their understanding of targets of input and outcome of their compartmentalized contribution to specific conservation problems might be incompatible with the principles and criteria of modern CCH, thus affecting productivity of such contribution. This paper focuses on this conflict by examining selected relevant aspects based on the experience of the collaborative interdisciplinary research in conservation of cultural heritage.

The “ATHENA” H2020 Twinning project seeks to establish a Center of Excellence in the field of Remote Sensing for Cultural Heritage through the development of an enhanced knowledge base and innovative methods in the areas of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage. This paper presents an overview of the ATHENA twinning project as well a review of the remote sensing in archaeology. The ATHENA stakeholder hub is presented through a WEBGIS platform. The importance of capitalizing on the experience of running the ATHENA project for the benefit of the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (ECoE) is explained. In recent years, Earth Observation (EO) techniques have been used extensively for archaeological and cultural heritage applications, which makes the ECoE a key player in EO activities in the Eastern Meditteranean region. The different areas that are under the umbrella of the remote sensing in archaeology sector are categorized based on the review findings. Finally, how Earth observation and remote sensing is spread out through research activities in the Eastern Meditteranean region from 1998 to 2018 is presented based on the Scopus engine.

This paper presents the pathway towards the establishment of the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (ECoE), through the upgrade of the existing Remote Sensing & Geo-Environment Group - ERATOSTHENES Research Centre (ERC), within the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT). The ECoE aspires to become a sustainable, viable and autonomous Centre of Excellence for Earth Surveillance and Space-Based Monitoring of the Environment. The ECoE will provide the highest quality of related services in the National, European, Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East and Northern Africa areas (EMMENA). Therefore, drawing on the capitalization of experience and knowledge from previous projects and the research areas and international networks of the ERC, this papers highlights the importance of the establishment of the ECoE in the EMMENA area.

The paper presents the more important highlights of a research on the role of information and communication technologies in expanding access to cultural content in the concrete social context in Bulgaria. The subject now is not studied in a comprehensive way. Separate documents and articles are covered various aspects of the problem. In Bulgaria, there is no comprehensive work devoted to this issue. The author does not claim full comprehensiveness of the subject concerned. Account is taken of the fact that a number of researchers, international and national institutions working on the topic of access to cultural content have been interested in it. Specific accents are made and the current state of the problem in Bulgaria is analyzed. Particular attention is given to the digitization in public cultural institutions of memory - libraries, museums, archives where long term availability of cultural content and its long-term accessibility is provided. Good practices are presented, problems that are more important are outlined, results and conclusions are drawn and recommendations are made for possible solutions to the problems. The results of the study confirmed the hypothesis that information and communication technologies play a key role in preserving cultural values and can foster the expansion of access to cultural content. The conclusions highlight the impact of the digitization of cultural values on the economic growth of Bulgaria by taking into account the education, tourism, research and the involvement of the local industry.

The paper presents the application of various 3D imagining methods to study the state of the mural painting in the dome of Blessed Ladislaus’ Chapel of St. Anne’s Church in Warsaw. The temple was built on the embankment of the Vistula river in the XV-th century. The chapel was added to the nave in the XVII-th century. From the beginning this location of the church caused a lot of structural problems. The church stability was disturbed due to digging an underground tunnel nearby in the years 1947–49. The Ladislaus’ Chapel, situated close to the tunnel on the side of the escarpment was the most endangered. The current rescue work of the mural painting of the chapel dome required an accurate measurement and inventory of the architectural structure. The dome was measured using various methods: laser scanning and photogrammetry. As a result we obtained 4 models of the chapel dome, which could be combined and compared.

Nowadays more and more innovative survey techniques allow gathering detailed information about historical buildings, their present conditions, the materials composing them and the structural problems mining their stability. Within this context, the integration of digital 2D and 3D survey models can provide a deeper insight on both the present geometrical configuration and the constructive phases, allowing, at the same time, a detailed damage assessment. More specifically, an overview of the complex geometries, the irregular cross-sections and vertical deviations of the buildings can be achieved by juxtaposing sections taken from the point cloud with orthophotos or images obtained through digital rectification. This method can also be used as a support to visual analyses such as stratigraphic or crack pattern surveys. The present paper discusses the advantages of integrating the modern survey techniques of laser scanning and photogrammetric models through photorealistic images and accurate measurements of the Venetian Byzantine church of Santa Fosca on Torcello Island. This building, indeed, lends itself well to the purpose of this work, due to its peculiar geometrical configuration, the numerous modifications occurred throughout the centuries and the current structural damages.

The Sydney Opera House is a world-class performing arts center and is recognized internationally as a modern architectural masterpiece. This paper describes recent work focused at the development of an inspection and monitoring methodology for the roof tiles of the Sydney Opera House that aligns with the current tile tap testing regime. The particularity of the proposed approach relies on its ability to uniquely identify the location of the tile being tap tested within the building geometry and to associate it to the corresponding measurements and condition assessment evaluation. The outcome of this process is presented in a graphical form based on a simple three color ranking scheme that rates the tiles’ conditions from good to acceptable and poor. It is expected that such output could be presented in various forms, such as in a BIM model. Within this procedure, the measurements can be stored for future reference and for the evaluation of historical trends. The broader use of this approach is then briefly highlighted by considering other non-destructive testing techniques and an example is presented in the final part of the paper in relation to concrete components.

The paper presents the ongoing project conducted by an interdisciplinary team at the Bieliński Palace in Otwock Wielki, near Warsaw (Poland). The main aim of the project is to document the architecture and architectural elements with the use of digital methods such as photogrammetry and 3D scanning, as well as investigating the construction phases of the palace, through the analysis of the digital data collected.The Bieliński Palace is an example of élite architecture of the Baroque period in Poland. Thought the architect responsible for the original plans remains unknown, the plan, the proportions, as well as architectural details find good parallels in the finest buildings of the capital of that time, and show clear inspirations from the western examples of the architecture of the period.Since the archival data is very scarce, the only way to learn about the history and construction phases of the palace is through a detailed analysis of the building’s structure. To this aim we perform a series of analyses of the digital data, such as wall flatness analysis and laser beam refraction intensity. We believe that the careful analysis of the data collected for the purpose of documentation can reveal valuable information that will contribute to our understanding of the building’s history.

The application of digital technology in the preservation of cultural assets is an international common trend. It combines the acquisition and preservation of integrated data which is very practical for the demonstration of various analysis and diversification. In 2017, 19th General Assembly of the International Ruins and Monuments Council Conference held in India states that government have the responsibility to identify, evaluate, record all of heritage sites and raise awareness of their importance. Therefore, digital preservation technology should be made universal in researching digital asset preservation. This project is based on the concept of digitalized conservation technology development. In order to implement the preservation and management of cultural assets, 3D laser scanning and control survey were used to record Taiwan Qiong-Lin civil defense underground tunnel digitally. To achieve the preservation and development of future cultural assets, this project also includes 3D point cloud models for tiled digital topographic map, urban planning, etc.

The ongoing synergy between the digitization of the building process and new paradigms related to the production of architectural constructions and building elements, addresses the definition of new scenarios that are worth investigating. The recurring question, indeed, is how the most advanced digital techniques for material production can have a tangible impact on architecture and its morphological languages.In the field of building design, the chance to turn digital data into matter represents a key point to deal with, in order to demonstrate the possibility to transfer actual benefits from other sectors related to the construction industry. This new technical asset links the digitization of processes with the industrialization of building products.The present research aims at deepening the opportunity of Additive Layer Manufacturing technologies, alongside the current Building Information Modeling and parametric design methods, to push further the hitherto established decision-making rules and the conventional building site organization, towards a sustainable development.

This paper introduces the ongoing ERC-funded project Chronologicon Hibernicum, which studies the diachronic developments of the Irish language between c. 550–950, and aims at refining the absolute chronology of these developments. It presents firstly the project organization, its subject matter and objective, then gives an overview of the potentials and challenges in studying the Early Irish language. The project combines historical linguistic analysis, corpus linguistic methods and Bayesian statistic tools. Finally the paper explains the impact of this project in preserving the Irish cultural heritage and the lessons learned in the first three years.

This paper introduces a project for automatically recognizing ancient Asian characters by image processing and deep learning with the aim of preserving Asian culture. The ancient characters examined include Chinese and Indian characters, which are the most mysterious, wildly used, and historic in the ancient world, and also feature multiply types. The automatic recognition method consists of preprocessing and recognition processing. The preprocessing includes character segmentation and noise reduction, and the recognition processing has a conventional recognition and deep learning. The conventional recognition method consists of feature extraction and similarity calculation or classification, and data augmentation is a key part of the deep learning. Experimental results show that deep learning achieves a better recognition accuracy than conventional image processing. Our aim is to preserve ancient literature by digitizing it and clarifying the characters and how they change throughout history by means of accurate character recognition. We also hope to help people discover new knowledge from ancient literature.

Greek dialects of Asia Minor are considered as ideal case studies on the elucidation of the evolution of the Greek language as well on different phenomena of language contact, due to their longtime contact with the Turkish language and their relative isolation from the other Greek dialects. In fact, the dialects in question constitute a rich cultural and language heritage in threat of extinction. Therefore, there is an urgent need of describing and preserving this invaluable heritage. In this paper, an innovative system of archiving and management of digitized written and oral data from three Greek dialects of Asia Minor (Pontic, Cappadocian, Aivaliot) is presented. The system also contains a search and retrieve component which enables: (a) a combined search at different levels of linguistic representation, (b) combined search in both written and oral data and (c) access to metadata.

Rubbings are among the oldest ancient literatures and potentially contain a lot of knowledge waiting to be unlocked. Constructing a rubbing database has therefore become an important research topic in terms of discovering and clarifying the potential knowledge. However, current rubbing databases are very simply, and there is no process in place for discovering the potential knowledge discovery. Moreover, the rubbing characters need to be recognized manually because there are so many different character styles and because the rubbings are in various stages of damage due to the aging process, and this takes an enormous amount of time and effort. In this work, our aim is to construct a spatiotemporal rubbing database based on multi-style Chinese character recognition using deep learning, that visualizes the spatiotemporal information in the form of a keyword of rubbing images on a map. The idea is that the potential knowledge unlocked by the keyword will help with research on historical information organization, climatic variation, disaster prediction and response, and more.