PROJECT
About
Shared participation in the knowledge of cultural heritage, including the natural and built landscape, is a multifaceted and particularly topical issue that needs to be broached to understand, communicate, preserve and transmit to future generations our cultural heritage in its material and immaterial expressions.
To achieve the cultural heritage knowledge need is necessary to document heritage through the integration of several methods and disciplines that, when supported by the latest digital technologies, generate a wide range of heterogeneous information that needs to be semantically organised and subsequently suitably analysed and interpreted, in order to direct specific planning, protection, conservation, promotion and enhancement processes. The task of this project is to acquire data and digitally record the artefacts that man has built around watercourses, either to cross them or to use their power for productive purposes or to protect himself from hydrogeological events.
These artefacts, such as mills, infrastructures and canalisations, mirror particular types of anthropisation and are closely linked to their original context. Appropriate processes, widely tested by the international scientific community, aiming to fulfil digital representation of geospatial data in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and architectural data in Building Information Modelling (BIM) will be carried out to deepen heritage knowledge.
These processes, conducted with a particular focus on the diachronic reading of historical landscape transformations (Heritage/Historical GIS) and those of the built heritage (Heritage/Historical BIM), integrated with data from the analysis of hydrogeological and hydroclimatic time series, will serve to develop a tool particularly suited to the definition of complex cause-effect mechanisms for the areas analysed.
The integration of the two processes is aimed at creating the basis for a Heritage/Historical Landscape Information Modelling (HLIM), an aim closely linked to the management of big data but also to the intention of defining an open, versatile and accessible tool for several professionals involved in cultural and natural heritage tasks. In the same way, starting from the HLIM developed, a series of outputs aimed at deepening communication and heritage education will be defined to ensure site resilience and related sustainability following the involvement of civil society.
Finally, the trans-disciplinary approach guaranteed by the expertise of the involved research teams will be able to approach the issue of the human-landscape relationship from a multi-objective perspective, thanks to participatory processes geared towards the development and sustainable conservation of marginal and not well knows territories. The study case will be the territory of the inner areas of Abruzzo and Sardinia regions by selecting some artefacts and analysing them in relation to their natural contexts.
Keywords
#cultural and landscape heritage #watermills #digitization of the cultural heritage #multidisciplinary analysis #HGISandHBIMintegration #culturalheritageeducation #HeritageInformationModelling #HistoricalInformationModelling #HLIM
Goals
The research begins with the analysis of connections between material culture and landscape, exploring the infrastructures and artefacts connected to water (bridge, mills, and paper mills), and aims to define digital tools for documentation and management of the built heritage. The objective is to integrate into a single platform spatial data with those of individual artefacts in a multi-scalar and multi-temporal perspective without losing the three-dimensional data of the representation.
The technological connotation of the project, is oriented towards the definition of digital outputs capable of linking data from scientific research with the three-dimensional models of landscape and natural heritage, declining the process of City Information Modelling (CIM) to the landscape context. As a consequence, the project herein intends to paint the basis of the creation of a Heritage/Historical Landscape Information Modelling (HLIM).
The technological challenge is finalized to integrate the process of Heritage/Historical Building Information Modelling (HBIM) and Heritage/Historical Geographical Information System (HGIS), and therefore, to closely link the management of big data, from acquisition, systematization and analysis to utilization. Indeed, the project aims also to define an operative tool that maybe open, versatile and accessible to several professionals involved in cultural and natural heritage in various roles.
The integration of HGIS and HBIM data with those derived from multi-disciplinary analyses, such as historical-archaeological or hydrogeological and hydroclimatic time series related to pilot areas, can provide a useful interdisciplinary connective reference framework and, at the same time, a particularly suitable tool for the definition of the complex cause-effect mechanisms that typically underlie the evolution of human settlements.
Project Milestones
M.1 – KNOWLEDGE ENHANCEMENT
A.1 – Kick off meeting.
A.2 – Background assessment.
A.3 – General territorial data acquisition.
A.4 – Co-creation of knowledge.
A.5 – Detailed data acquisition.
A.6 – Geological and hydrogeological analysis.
A.7 – Analysis of territorial data.
A.8 -Analysis of selected artifacts.
M.2 – HOLISTIC DATA MANAGEMENT
A.9 – Postprocessing geological and hydrogeological data
Re-elaboration of data acquired in Action A.6 to be integrated with subsequent actions on a territorial and detailed scale.
A.10 – Post-processing of spatial data
Re-elaboration of data acquired in previous actions to determine context ontologies, relational matrices and the spatial dynamics that characterized them by modifying or extinguishing them.
A.11 – Post-processing of architectural-scale data
Re-elaboration of data acquired in the previous actions to determine the ontologies of the artefacts. Definition of the data architecture and relational organization between these, aimed at the census of the historical-material consistencies of the artefacts (Artefact Ontology Form).
A.12 – Spatial data representation (HGIS)
Definition and implementation of the data architecture containing ontological records within Relational Geographic Database Management Systems. Development of high-resolution GIS prototypes relating data to each other. Metadata can be accessed and consulted both via Web Service applications and through WFS and WMS transmission protocols.
A.13 – Architectural data representation (HBIM)
Parametric modelling through BIM processes starting from the ontology defined in A.11 for the creation of HBIM of the artefacts under investigation, which guarantees the simplification of the phases of intervention design, analysis, management and maintenance of the heritage during its life cycle.
A.14 – Mixed-scale data representation (HLIM)
Implementation of a platform for the integration of GIS and BIM data within a beta version of an HLIM for data management, consultation and semantic processing of geographical information and three-dimensional representation of heritage.
M.3 – HERITAGE INTERPRETATION
A.15 – Designing digital applications for heritage communication
Development of VR platform and applications for the dissemination, promotion and enhancement of the natural and cultural heritage of the pilot areas, improving the communication potential of HLIM using digital technologies.
M.4 – IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND TESTING TOOLS
A.16 – Community involvement by target audience
Definition of target audiences and differentiation of communication methods according to the identified targets (HLIM for administrations and VR products for citizenship organized according to age groups) and administration of tests to assess impacts.
A.17 – User feedback analysis
Post-processing and data analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the defined digital tools.
M.5 – RESEARCH DISSEMINATION AND COMMUNICATION
A.18 – Scientific publications, promotional activities and sector conferences
Dissemination of results on research publications in scientific journals, organization of scientific conferences, and communication actions on social platforms and main media on a national and local level.