Envision of a digital foundation to embed knowledge around all aspects of cultural heritage

Reviewing current results and applications in the domain of (digital) cultural heritage, such as virtual reality, digital information management,multimedia, makes evident that technologies and systems are nowadays pervasive in the investigation phases and in the analysis and exploitation of the scientific data. Applications of virtual reality by means of 3D representations of architectural and historical models are attracting a wide range of audience – especially in the tourist and multimedia sector. Typically, the emphasis is given to the visual representation and its impact to the user, giving less importance to the scientific accuracy and capacity of the platform to represent the whole “knowledge” associated to the cultural asset. There is a demanding need to envision approaches to communize all the elements of such multidisciplinary knowledge. A data set of coherent, structured, multidisciplinary, multi-source, multi-media information (that can be physically distributed) - constituted by “markers” (i.e. pertinent to a specific domain such as architectural, technical, structural, historical, bibliographical, archive related, photographical, physical, chemical, ...) – should give the capacity to implement Cultural Heritage platforms around a sort of a “Digital Foundation” of assets to support different applications and user experiences. Current approaches and availability of digital libraries, the accessibility of distributed information (e.g. by internet), the capacity to model data and meta-data, the availability of instruments to accurately position objects in space and time (together with ontological representations) let us envision a novel model of representing a dynamical evolving multi-source “digital foundation”. The above model, as the result of a multidisciplinary approach coming from a long experience in research and technologies in various fields (ICT architectures, Digital Libraries, Knowledge representation, Distributed infrastructures, GIS and applications of Satellite Navigation) and projects (National and European) is now experimented around the UNESCO Villa Adriana in Tivoli (Rome, Italy). It constitutes the center of excellence that allowed the authors to preliminary build a digital foundation for the area, demonstrating the capability to generate (among other features) accurate 3D virtual reality representations, distributed multi-source/multi-target and multi-modal representation for virtual guides and to support archeological studies and excavations for professional users. It furthermore implements capacities to manage, to control and to develop the necessary knowledge for the safeguard and conservation of the immense material associated to archeological sites.