A spatial ontology for architectural heritage information

Abstract

The evolved potentialities of information technologies permit data disambiguation, interoperability and sharing through the web to reach an effective comprehensive knowledge. International standards are published as a reference for integrating data in a common framework and in an open perspective. Standard ontologies exist both in the cartographic and the cultural heritage field; however, they are distinct standards, and some limits (in the spatial or semantic management) make them incomplete for being used to manage architectural heritage knowledge. It is necessary to exploit both disciplines’ contributions, integrating them in a model suitable for architectural heritage data management. In this paper, the ontological model for cartographic urban themes, OGC CityGML, is extended for managing architectural heritage multi-scale, multi-temporal, complex data. The conceptual framework is explained and some implementation aspects are considered, both for the definition of the extension and for the filling-in of such a structure with architectural heritage 3D data.