ArCo: the Italian Cultural Heritage Knowledge Graph

ArCo is the Italian Cultural Heritage knowledge graph, consisting of a network of seven vocabularies and 169 million triples about 820 thousand cultural entities. It is distributed jointly with a SPARQL endpoint, a software for converting catalogue records to RDF, and a rich suite of documentation material (testing, evaluation, how-to, examples, etc.). ArCo is based on the official General Catalogue of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MiBAC) - and its associated encoding regulations - which collects and validates the catalogue records of (ideally) all Italian Cultural Heritage properties (excluding libraries and archives), contributed by CH administrators from all over Italy. We present its structure, design methods and tools, its growing community, and delineate its importance, quality, and impact

Transdisciplinary approach to archaeological investigations in a Semantic Web perspective

In recent years, the transdisciplinarity of archaeological studies has greatly increased because of the mature interactions between archaeologists and scientists from different disciplines (called "archaeometers"). A number of diverse scientific disciplines collaborate to get an objective account of the archaeological records. A large amount of digital data support the whole process, and there is a great value in keeping the coherence of information and knowledge, as contributed by each intervening discipline. During the years, a number of representation models have been developed to account for the recording of the archaeological process in data bases. Lately, some semantic models, compliant with the CRMarchaeo reference model, have been developed to account for linking the institutional forms with the formal knowledge concerning the archaeological excavations and the related findings. On the contrary, the archaeometric processes have not been addressed yet in the Semantic Web community and only an upper reference model, called CRMsci, accounts for the representation of the scientific investigations in general. This paper presents a modular computational ontology for the interlinked representation of all the facts related to the archaeological and archaeometric analyses and interpretations, also connected to the recording catalogues. The computational ontology is compliant with CIDOC-CRM reference models CRMarchaeo and CRMsci and introduces a number of novel classes and properties to merge the two worlds in a joint representation. The ontology is in use in "Beyond Archaeology", a methodological project for the establishing of a transdisciplinary approach to archaeology and archaeometry, interlinked through a semantic model of processes and objects

Pattern-based design applied to cultural heritage knowledge graphs

Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) have become an established and recognised practice for guaranteeing good quality ontology engineering. There are several ODP repositories where ODPs are shared as well as ontology design methodologies recommending their reuse. Performing rigorous testing is recommended as well for supporting ontology maintenance and validating the resulting resource against its motivating requirements. Nevertheless, it is less than straightforward to find guidelines on how to apply such methodologies for developing domain-specific knowledge graphs. ArCo is the knowledge graph of Italian Cultural Heritage and has been developed by using eXtreme Design (XD), an ODP- and test-driven methodology. During its development, XD has been adapted to the need of the CH domain e.g. gathering requirements from an open, diverse community of consumers, a new ODP has been defined and many have been specialised to address specific CH requirements. This paper presents ArCo and describes how to apply XD to the development and validation of a CH knowledge graph, also detailing the (intellectual) process implemented for matching the encountered modelling problems to ODPs. Relevant contributions also include a novel web tool for supporting unit-testing of knowledge graphs, a rigorous evaluation of ArCo, and a discussion of methodological lessons learned during ArCo development

An Interoperable Spatio-Temporal Model for Archaeological Data Based on ISO Standard 19100

Archaeological data are characterized by both spatial and temporal dimensions that are often related to each other and are of particular interest during the interpretation process. For this reason, several attempts have been performed in recent years in order to develop a GIS tailored for archaeological data. However, despite the increasing use of information technologies in the archaeological domain, the actual situation is that any agency or research group independently develops its own local database and management application which is isolated from the others. Conversely, the sharing of information and the cooperation between different archaeological agencies or research groups can be particularly useful in order to support the interpretation process by using data discovered in similar situations w.r.t. spatio-temporal or thematic aspects. In the geographical domain, the INSPIRE initiative of European Union tries to support the development of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) through which several organizations, like public bodies or private companies, with overlapping goals can share data, resources, tools and competencies in an effective way. The aim of this paper is to lay the basis for the development of an Archaeological SDI starting from the experience acquired during the collaboration among several Italian organizations. In particular, the paper proposes a spatio-temporal conceptual model for archaeological data based on the ISO Standards of the 19100 family and promotes the use of the GeoUML methodology in order to put into practice such interoperability. The GeoUML methodology and tools have been enhanced in order to suite the archaeological domain and to automatically produce several useful documents, configuration files and codebase starting from the conceptual specification. The applicability of the spatio-temporal conceptual model and the usefulness of the produced tools have been tested in three different Italian contexts: Rome, Verona and Isola della Scala

THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE THROUGH H-BIM MODELS: HISTORIC DOCUMENTATION WITH A SEMANTIC APPROACH

Abstract. The Building Information Modeling (BIM) in the Architectural Heritage field is constantly proving to be a fertile ground for the experimentation of innovative systems for the enhancement and management of cultural heritage. Regarding to the management of the entire process, the building field is increasing in efficiency from the construction to the management phase; conversely, the approach to historical buildings opens up interesting and heterogeneous scenarios, according to different levels of complexity. The presented work is the result of a collaboration between the Politecnico di Torino and the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura of Granada: the main scope was to create an historic building information model (H-BIM) of the building that today hosts the Faculty of Architecture (ETSAG), taking into account its historical past from the sixteenth century up to the present day, as the result of many modifications, extensions and different use classifications over time. According to this, the BIM methodology can be considered as a bridge between the archive documentation and the digital model, proving to be an effective tool as a data repository, semantically oriented, not only constituted by geometry, but also by alpha-numerical attributes, improving in effectiveness if it is directly related to formal language object oriented.</p

The Heritage Digital Twin: a bicycle made for two. The integration of digital methodologies into cultural heritage research

The paper concerns the definition of a novel ontology for cultural heritage based on the concept of digital twin. The ontology, called Heritage Digital Twin ontology, is a compatible extension of the well-known CIDOC CRM ISO standard for cultural heritage documentation and incorporates all the different documentation systems presently in use for cultural heritage documentation. In the authors' view, it supports documentation interoperability at a higher level than the ones currently in use and enables effective cooperation among different users.Comment: Submitted to Open Research Europe. 30 pages, 9 figure

Digitalizing Data: from the historical research to data modelling for a (digital) collection documentation

European cultural institutions hold an extraordinary tangible and intangible heritage not always accessible by the public for several reasons e.g. spaces, conservation, exhibition, choices. Digitisation gives the opportunity to make heritage permanently available by scientists and by a wider public, placing replicas of artefacts of museums’ collections in a virtual context. This chapter is part of the B.A.C.K. TO. T.H.E. F.U.T.U.RE. project, coordinated by Massimiliano Lo Turco and presented in the preface of this volume. The research focuses on fifteen wooden architectural models of the early 19th century, part of the collection of the Museo Egizio of Turin. The maquettes are here denominated ‘expedition models of Egyptian architectures’, by referring to their original production. These artefacts suffered several moving outside and inside the museum. The aim of the research is to connect virtual replicas of the models to narratives and the historical documents gathered during the historical research. The chapter presents the collection as a whole, pointing out its historical and cultural value. With the aim to provide an exhaustive documentation and to create connections between artefacts and their documentation, the structure of the build database is here described. Starting from data and metadata available through the Museo Egizio database, a complex system has been created, following the CIDOCCRM standars for the information modelling. A specific attention has been paid to the strategy developed for the 3D web-publishing, considering the presence of a centred information management system as fundamental

Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies in Scholarly Digital Editing

This volume is based on the selected papers presented at the Workshop on Scholarly Digital Editions, Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies, held at the Uni- versity of Lausanne in June 2019. The Workshop was organized by Elena Spadini (University of Lausanne) and Francesca Tomasi (University of Bologna), and spon- sored by the Swiss National Science Foundation through a Scientific Exchange grant, and by the Centre de recherche sur les lettres romandes of the University of Lausanne. The Workshop comprised two full days of vibrant discussions among the invited speakers, the authors of the selected papers, and other participants.1 The acceptance rate following the open call for papers was around 60%. All authors – both selected and invited speakers – were asked to provide a short paper two months before the Workshop. The authors were then paired up, and each pair exchanged papers. Paired authors prepared questions for one another, which were to be addressed during the talks at the Workshop; in this way, conversations started well before the Workshop itself. After the Workshop, the papers underwent a second round of peer-review before inclusion in this volume. This time, the relevance of the papers was not under discus- sion, but reviewers were asked to appraise specific aspects of each contribution, such as its originality or level of innovation, its methodological accuracy and knowledge of the literature, as well as more formal parameters such as completeness, clarity, and coherence. The bibliography of all of the papers is collected in the public Zotero group library GraphSDE20192, which has been used to generate the reference list for each contribution in this volume. The invited speakers came from a wide range of backgrounds (academic, commer- cial, and research institutions) and represented the different actors involved in the remediation of our cultural heritage in the form of graphs and/or in a semantic web en- vironment. Georg Vogeler (University of Graz) and Ronald Haentjens Dekker (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Humanities Cluster) brought the Digital Humanities research perspective; the work of Hans Cools and Roberta Laura Padlina (University of Basel, National Infrastructure for Editions), as well as of Tobias Schweizer and Sepi- deh Alassi (University of Basel, Digital Humanities Lab), focused on infrastructural challenges and the development of conceptual and software frameworks to support re- searchers’ needs; Michele Pasin’s contribution (Digital Science, Springer Nature) was informed by his experiences in both academic research, and in commercial technology companies that provide services for the scientific community. The Workshop featured not only the papers of the selected authors and of the invited speakers, but also moments of discussion between interested participants. In addition to the common Q&A time, during the second day one entire session was allocated to working groups delving into topics that had emerged during the Workshop. Four working groups were created, with four to seven participants each, and each group presented a short report at the end of the session. Four themes were discussed: enhancing TEI from documents to data; ontologies for the Humanities; tools and infrastructures; and textual criticism. All of these themes are represented in this volume. The Workshop would not have been of such high quality without the support of the members of its scientific committee: Gioele Barabucci, Fabio Ciotti, Claire Clivaz, Marion Rivoal, Greta Franzini, Simon Gabay, Daniel Maggetti, Frederike Neuber, Elena Pierazzo, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Matteo Romanello, Maïeul Rouquette, Elena Spadini, Francesca Tomasi, Aris Xanthos – and, of course, the support of all the colleagues and administrative staff in Lausanne, who helped the Workshop to become a reality. The final versions of these papers underwent a single-blind peer review process. We want to thank the reviewers: Helena Bermudez Sabel, Arianna Ciula, Marilena Daquino, Richard Hadden, Daniel Jeller, Tiziana Mancinelli, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Patrick Sahle, Raffaele Viglianti, Joris van Zundert, and others who preferred not to be named personally. Your input enhanced the quality of the volume significantly! It is sad news that Hans Cools passed away during the production of the volume. We are proud to document a recent state of his work and will miss him and his ability to implement the vision of a digital scholarly edition based on graph data-models and semantic web technologies. The production of the volume would not have been possible without the thorough copy-editing and proof reading by Lucy Emmerson and the support of the IDE team, in particular Bernhard Assmann, the TeX-master himself. This volume is sponsored by the University of Bologna and by the University of Lausanne. Bologna, Lausanne, Graz, July 2021 Francesca Tomasi, Elena Spadini, Georg Vogele