A semantic-based platform for the digital analysis of architectural heritage

This essay focuses on the fields of architectural documentation and digital representation. We present a research paper concerning the development of an information system at the scale of architecture, taking into account the relationships that can be established between the representation of buildings (shape, dimension, state of conservation, hypothetical restitution) and heterogeneous information about various fields (such as the technical, the documentary or still the historical one). The proposed approach aims to organize multiple representations (and associated information) around a semantic description model with the goal of defining a system for the multi-field analysis of buildings

Historical SDI, thematic maps and analysis of a complex network of medieval towers (13th-15th century) in the moorish strip

The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-4, 2018 ISPRS TC IV Mid-term Symposium “3D Spatial Information Science – The Engine of Change”, 1–5 October 2018, Delft, The NetherlandsThis work is part of an investigation into the use of GIS for the documentation and comprehension of medieval architectural heritage in the ancient Kingdom of Seville. The research was done in the framework of the project “Sustainable guardianship of cultural heritage through digital BIM and GIS models: contribution to knowledge and social innovation”, an interdisciplinary project focused on the applications of information technology in architectural heritage in Spain. The study case of this paper is located in the Guadalquivir valley during the period between 13th and 15th centuries. It concerns the Moorish Strip site, fortified by the Christian Kingdom of Castile with the aim of creating a barrier with the Moorish Kingdom. Its deteriorated state has led us to create a historical and spatial database in order to contribute to its conservation management plan. Apart from the historical documentation research and the data gathering, intensive fieldwork was also done to collect information about the buildings. In this paper we present a Historical SDI to investigate the hypothesis that the spatial patterns of the Moorish Band obey rules of “inter-visibility” control. Some analysis has been done on the site scale, such as: i) a thematic map of building material; ii) a spatiotemporal analysis; iii) the density of the distribution of towers over the territory; iv) a simulation of the territory visibility from the towers; v) the inter-visibility among towers; iv) thematic maps using attribute values. These analyses permitted us to highlight the need to create a preservation plan that should consider the network visibility system as an important value for heritage interpretation and knowledge.Spain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness HAR2016–78113-

Time indeterminacy and spatio-temporal building transformations: an approach for architectural heritage understanding

Nowadays most digital reconstructions in architecture and archeology describe buildings heritage as awhole of static and unchangeable entities. However, historical sites can have a rich and complex history, sometimes full of evolutions, sometimes only partially known by means of documentary sources. Various aspects condition the analysis and the interpretation of cultural heritage. First of all, buildings are not inexorably constant in time: creation, destruction, union, division, annexation, partial demolition and change of function are the transformations that buildings can undergo over time. Moreover, other factors sometimes contradictory can condition the knowledge about an historical site, such as historical sources and uncertainty. On one hand, historical documentation concerning past states can be heterogeneous, dubious, incomplete and even contradictory. On the other hand, uncertainty is prevalent in cultural heritage in various forms: sometimes it is impossible to define the dating period, sometimes the building original shape or yet its spatial position. This paper proposes amodeling approach of the geometrical representation of buildings, taking into account the kind of transformations and the notion of temporal indetermination

Spatiotemporal dynamics of the postnatal developing primate brain transcriptome.

Developmental changes in the temporal and spatial regulation of gene expression drive the emergence of normal mature brain function, while disruptions in these processes underlie many neurodevelopmental abnormalities. To solidify our foundational knowledge of such changes in a primate brain with an extended period of postnatal maturation like in human, we investigated the whole-genome transcriptional profiles of rhesus monkey brains from birth to adulthood. We found that gene expression dynamics are largest from birth through infancy, after which gene expression profiles transition to a relatively stable state by young adulthood. Biological pathway enrichment analysis revealed that genes more highly expressed at birth are associated with cell adhesion and neuron differentiation, while genes more highly expressed in juveniles and adults are associated with cell death. Neocortex showed significantly greater differential expression over time than subcortical structures, and this trend likely reflects the protracted postnatal development of the cortex. Using network analysis, we identified 27 co-expression modules containing genes with highly correlated expression patterns that are associated with specific brain regions, ages or both. In particular, one module with high expression in neonatal cortex and striatum that decreases during infancy and juvenile development was significantly enriched for autism spectrum disorder (ASD)-related genes. This network was enriched for genes associated with axon guidance and interneuron differentiation, consistent with a disruption in the formation of functional cortical circuitry in ASD

Achieving the state of research pertaining to GIS applications for cultural heritage by a systematic literature review

During the last decade, we have witnessed an increased interest in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), including the so-called “Historical GIS”, 3D GIS heritage and its subcategory of “SDI for cultural heritage”. Specific literature reviews, gathering and analysing the scientific production for Culture Heritage and GIS based research questions, are currently lacking. Therefore, the overall goal of this article is to provide an objective summary of the current state -of-the-art concerning how GIS has been used and what methods and analysis have been applied in the field of cultural heritage. In this sense, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of the literature on the application of GIS in cultural heritage is carried out. To do so, the WOS and Scopus databases were considered. The results show that the dominant application of GIS is in the realisation of inventory and cataloguing of archaeological and architectural heritage. As a result of the quantitative analysis, we also verify the principal sources in which most studies have been published, highlighting the "ISPRS Archives" with 14 publications, the "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" with 9, and "Proceedings of Digital Heritage" with 6 publications. These data show that the sources that most publis h mainly belong to the field of IT and Computer Science. In addition, the SLR shows that in the last three years there has been a greater tendency to use GIS to solve more specific problems of heritage through its use in conjunction with other tools such as BIM and photogrammetrySpain’s Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness HAR2016–78113-R HAR2016–76371-

A decision forest based feature selection framework for action recognition from RGB-Depth cameras

In this paper, we present an action recognition framework leveraging data mining capabilities of random decision forests trained on kinematic features. We describe human motion via a rich collection of kinematic feature time-series computed from the skeletal representation of the body in motion. We discriminatively optimize a random decision forest model over this collection to identify the most effective subset of features, localized both in time and space. Later, we train a support vector machine classifier on the selected features. This approach improves upon the baseline performance obtained using the whole feature set with a significantly less number of features (one tenth of the original). On MSRC-12 dataset (12 classes), our method achieves 94% accuracy. On the WorkoutSU-10 dataset, collected by our group (10 physical exercise classes), the accuracy is 98%. The approach can also be used to provide insights on the spatiotemporal dynamics of human actions

Approaches for advancing scientific understanding of macrosystems

The emergence of macrosystems ecology (MSE), which focuses on regional- to continental-scale ecological patterns and processes, builds upon a history of long-term and broad-scale studies in ecology. Scientists face the difficulty of integrating the many elements that make up macrosystems, which consist of hierarchical processes at interacting spatial and temporal scales. Researchers must also identify the most relevant scales and variables to be considered, the required data resources, and the appropriate study design to provide the proper inferences. The large volumes of multi-thematic data often associated with macrosystem studies typically require validation, standardization, and assimilation. Finally, analytical approaches need to describe how cross-scale and hierarchical dynamics and interactions relate to macroscale phenomena. Here, we elaborate on some key methodological challenges of MSE research and discuss existing and novel approaches to meet them