Historical collaborative geocoding

The latest developments in digital have provided large data sets that can increasingly easily be accessed and used. These data sets often contain indirect localisation information, such as historical addresses. Historical geocoding is the process of transforming the indirect localisation information to direct localisation that can be placed on a map, which enables spatial analysis and cross-referencing. Many efficient geocoders exist for current addresses, but they do not deal with the temporal aspect and are based on a strict hierarchy (..., city, street, house number) that is hard or impossible to use with historical data. Indeed historical data are full of uncertainties (temporal aspect, semantic aspect, spatial precision, confidence in historical source, ...) that can not be resolved, as there is no way to go back in time to check. We propose an open source, open data, extensible solution for geocoding that is based on the building of gazetteers composed of geohistorical objects extracted from historical topographical maps. Once the gazetteers are available, geocoding an historical address is a matter of finding the geohistorical object in the gazetteers that is the best match to the historical address. The matching criteriae are customisable and include several dimensions (fuzzy semantic, fuzzy temporal, scale, spatial precision ...). As the goal is to facilitate historical work, we also propose web-based user interfaces that help geocode (one address or batch mode) and display over current or historical topographical maps, so that they can be checked and collaboratively edited. The system is tested on Paris city for the 19-20th centuries, shows high returns rate and is fast enough to be used interactively.Comment: WORKING PAPE

Spatial ontologies for architectural heritage

Informatics and artificial intelligence have generated new requirements for digital archiving, information, and documentation. Semantic interoperability has become fundamental for the management and sharing of information. The constraints to data interpretation enable both database interoperability, for data and schemas sharing and reuse, and information retrieval in large datasets. Another challenging issue is the exploitation of automated reasoning possibilities. The solution is the use of domain ontologies as a reference for data modelling in information systems. The architectural heritage (AH) domain is considered in this thesis. The documentation in this field, particularly complex and multifaceted, is well-known to be critical for the preservation, knowledge, and promotion of the monuments. For these reasons, digital inventories, also exploiting standards and new semantic technologies, are developed by international organisations (Getty Institute, ONU, European Union). Geometric and geographic information is essential part of a monument. It is composed by a number of aspects (spatial, topological, and mereological relations; accuracy; multi-scale representation; time; etc.). Currently, geomatics permits the obtaining of very accurate and dense 3D models (possibly enriched with textures) and derived products, in both raster and vector format. Many standards were published for the geographic field or in the cultural heritage domain. However, the first ones are limited in the foreseen representation scales (the maximum is achieved by OGC CityGML), and the semantic values do not consider the full semantic richness of AH. The second ones (especially the core ontology CIDOC – CRM, the Conceptual Reference Model of the Documentation Commettee of the International Council of Museums) were employed to document museums’ objects. Even if it was recently extended to standing buildings and a spatial extension was included, the integration of complex 3D models has not yet been achieved. In this thesis, the aspects (especially spatial issues) to consider in the documentation of monuments are analysed. In the light of them, the OGC CityGML is extended for the management of AH complexity. An approach ‘from the landscape to the detail’ is used, for considering the monument in a wider system, which is essential for analysis and reasoning about such complex objects. An implementation test is conducted on a case study, preferring open source applications

Development of an Ontology of Tourist Attractions for Recommending Points of Interest in a Group Recommender System for Tourism

In recent years, the tourism industry has witnessed substantial growth, thanks to the pro liferation of digital technology and online platforms. Tourists now have greater access to information and the ability to make informed travel decisions. However, the abundance of available information often leaves tourists overwhelmed when selecting points of inter est (POI) that align with their preferences. Recommender Systems (RS) have emerged as a solution, personalising recommendations based on tourist behaviour, social networks, and contextual factors. To enhance RS efficacy, researchers have begun exploring the integration of psychological factors, such as personality traits. Yet, to meet the demands of modern tourists, a robust knowledge base, such as a tourist attractions ontology, is essential for seamless and rapid matching of tourist characteristics and preferences with available POI. With that in mind, this project aims to enhance a Group Recommender System (GRS) prototype, GrouPlanner, by creating a robust tourist attractions ontology. This ontology will facilitate rapid and accurate matching of points of interest with tourists’ character istics, including personality, preferences, and demographic data, ultimately improving POI recommendations. First, there needs to be an understanding of the personality of tourists and how it influences their choices when it comes to picking the best point of interest based on their personality. With that knowledge acquired, it is time to choose a way to represent this knowledge in the form of an ontology. In this project, the Protégé ontology editor was used to design the ontology and the rela tionships between the tourists’ personality and the points of interest. After designing the ontology, it had to be converted to a database so the Grouplanner system could access it. So, to do that, a solution was designed to integrate the designed ontology in a triple store data base, in this case, Apache Fuseki. With the database implemented, several tests were made to verify if the database would give the recommended points of interests based on the tourists’ preferences. This tests were later analysed.Nos anos mais recentes, a indústria do turismo presenciou um crescimento substancial dev ido à tecnologia digital e plataformas online. Cada vez mais, os turistas têm acesso a uma abundância de informação que influencia a habilidade de tomar decisões sobre viajar. No entanto, esta informação pode complicar a seleção dos pontos de interesse que alinhem com as preferências dos turistas. Para combater isso, sistemas de recomendação (SR) emergi ram como uma solução, personalizando as recomendações com base no comportamento do turista, redes socias e outros fatores. Para aumentar a eficácia destes sistemas, os investi gadores começaram a explorar a possibilidade de integração com fatores psicológicos, como traços de personalidade. Apesar disso, para cumprir as exigências dos turistas modernos, uma base de conhecimento robusta, como uma ontologia de atrações turísticas, é essencial para, de forma eficaz e eficiente, corresponder as características dos turistas com os pontos de interesse disponíveis. Com isso em mente, este projeto tem como objetivo melhorar um protótipo de um sistema de recomendação (GrouPlanner), criando uma ontologia robusta de atrações turísticas. Essa ontologia facilitará a correspondência rápida e precisa de pontos de interesse com as car acterísticas dos turistas, incluindo a sua personalidade e as suas preferências, melhorando assim as recomendações de pontos de interesse. Em primeiro lugar, é necessário compreender a personalidade dos turistas e como ela influ encia as suas escolhas ao selecionar o melhor ponto de interesse com base na sua person alidade. Com esse ponto adquirido, é necessário escolher uma maneira de representar esse conhecimento na forma de uma ontologia. Neste projeto, o editor de ontologias Protégé foi utilizado para projetar a ontologia e as relações entre a personalidade dos turistas e os pontos de interesse. Após a construção da ontologia, foi necessário convertê-la numa base de dados para que o sistema Grouplanner pudesse ter acesso. Para isso, foi desenhada uma solução para integrar a ontologia projetada numa base de dados "triple store", neste caso, o Apache Fuseki. Com a base de dados implementada, foram realizados vários testes para verificar se esta forneceria os pontos de interesse recomendados com base nas preferências dos turistas. Esses testes foram depois analisados

Spatial ontologies for architectural heritage

Informatics and artificial intelligence have generated new requirements for digital archiving, information, and documentation. Semantic interoperability has become fundamental for the management and sharing of information. The constraints to data interpretation enable both database interoperability, for data and schemas sharing and reuse, and information retrieval in large datasets. Another challenging issue is the exploitation of automated reasoning possibilities. The solution is the use of domain ontologies as a reference for data modelling in information systems. The architectural heritage (AH) domain is considered in this thesis. The documentation in this field, particularly complex and multifaceted, is well-known to be critical for the preservation, knowledge, and promotion of the monuments. For these reasons, digital inventories, also exploiting standards and new semantic technologies, are developed by international organisations (Getty Institute, ONU, European Union). Geometric and geographic information is essential part of a monument. It is composed by a number of aspects (spatial, topological, and mereological relations; accuracy; multi-scale representation; time; etc.). Currently, geomatics permits the obtaining of very accurate and dense 3D models (possibly enriched with textures) and derived products, in both raster and vector format. Many standards were published for the geographic field or in the cultural heritage domain. However, the first ones are limited in the foreseen representation scales (the maximum is achieved by OGC CityGML), and the semantic values do not consider the full semantic richness of AH. The second ones (especially the core ontology CIDOC – CRM, the Conceptual Reference Model of the Documentation Commettee of the International Council of Museums) were employed to document museums’ objects. Even if it was recently extended to standing buildings and a spatial extension was included, the integration of complex 3D models has not yet been achieved. In this thesis, the aspects (especially spatial issues) to consider in the documentation of monuments are analysed. In the light of them, the OGC CityGML is extended for the management of AH complexity. An approach ‘from the landscape to the detail’ is used, for considering the monument in a wider system, which is essential for analysis and reasoning about such complex objects. An implementation test is conducted on a case study, preferring open source applications

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

Enabling European archaeological research: The ARIADNE E-infrastructure

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades has become ever more collaborative, distributed and data-intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of einfrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access and re-use has lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE: the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EUfunded network has developed an einfrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realise. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users' expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the einfrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery and access) and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarises lessons learned, and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in sharing data through ARIADNE

A fuzzy model for studying kinetic decay phenomena in Genna Maria Nuraghe: Material properties, environmental data, accelerated ageing, and model calculations

In this study, a fuzzy model has been proposed for the control of the degradation process in Cultural Heritage. Specifically, the focus has been on the Nuragic building, Genna Maria, in Villanovaforru, Sardinia. Environmental data and material properties were considered to formalize inferences between different variables of the model. The results highlight the possibility of significant decay processes, such as salt crystallization and freeze-thaw cycles, estimated for all months of the year. A comparison between model elaborations and experimental data (material characterization, environmental data, accelerated ageing) demonstrates the reliability of the proposed procedure

Enabling European Archaeological Research: The ARIADNE E-Infrastructure

In the last 20 years, e-infrastructures have become ever more important for the conduct and progress of research in all branches of scientific enterprise. Increasingly collaborative, distributed and data-intensive research requires the sharing of resources (data, tools, computing facilities) via e-infrastructure as well as support for effective co-operation among research groups (ESF 2011; ESFRI 2016). Moreover there is the expectation that with large datasets ('big data'), e-infrastructure and advanced computing techniques, new scientific questions can be tackled. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of various digital methods and tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis and presentation of research results of individual projects. The provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access and re-use for the heritage sector is, however, lagging behind other research fields, such as the natural and life sciences. The consequence is a high level of fragmentation of archaeological data and limited capability for collaborative research across institutional and national as well as disciplinary boundaries (Aspöck and Geser 2014). This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE: the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This e-infrastructure initiative is being promoted by a consortium of archaeological institutes, data archives and technology developers, and funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (ARIADNE 2014a; Niccolucci and Richards 2013). ARIADNE enables archaeological data providers, large and small, to register and connect their resources (datasets, collections) to the e-infrastructure, and a data portal provides search, access and other services across the integrated resources. The portal puts into operation a proof of concept exemplar first developed under the ARENA (Archaeological Records of Europe Networked Access) project (Kenny and Richards 2005; Kilbride 2004), itself inspired by a proposal made by Hansen (1993). ARIADNE integrates resource discovery metadata using various controlled vocabularies, e.g. the W3C Data Catalogue Vocabulary (adapted for describing archaeological datasets), subject thesauri, gazetteers, chronologies, and the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM). Based on this integration the data portal offers several ways to search and access resources made available by data providers located in different countries. ARIADNE thus acts as a broker between data providers and users and offers additional web services for products such as high-resolution images, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), 3D objects and landscapes. Employing such services in research projects or for content deposited in digital archives will greatly enhance the ability of researchers to publish, access and study archaeological content online. ARIADNE therefore represents a substantial advance for archaeology; in particular it provides a common platform where dispersed data resources can be uniformly described, discovered and accessed. It is also an essential step towards the even more ambitious goal of offering archaeologists integrated data, tools and computing resources for web-based research that creates new knowledge (e-archaeology). The next section describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realise. The results of the ARIADNE user surveys undertaken to match expectations and requirements for the e-infrastructure and data portal services are then presented. The main part of the article describes ARIADNE's overall architecture, core services (data registration, discovery and access) and other extant or experimental services. A further section presents the on-going evaluation of the data integration and set of services. Finally, the article summarises some lessons already learned in the integration of data resources and services, and considers the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in sharing data through the ARIADNE e-infrastructure and portal

Challenges of building and maintaining an image database: a use case based on the Digital Research Archive for Byzantium (BIFAB)

Due to the complex nature of archival images, it is an ongoing challenge to establish a metadata architecture and metadata standards that are easy to navigate and take into consideration future requirements. This contribution will present a use case in the humanities based on the Digital Research Archive for Byzantium (DiFAB) at the University of Vienna. By tracing one monument and its photographic documentation, this paper will highlight some issues concerning metadata for images of material culture, such as: various analog and digital forms of documentation; available thesauri – including problems of historical geography, multilingualism, and culturally specific terminologies –; and the importance of both precise and imprecise dating for cultural historians and their research archives