The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
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Articles | Volume XLIII-B4-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B4-2020-33-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B4-2020-33-2020
24 Aug 2020
 | 24 Aug 2020

SEMANTICALLY DESCRIBING URBAN HISTORICAL BUILDINGS ACROSS DIFFERENT LEVELS OF GRANULARITY

E. Colucci, M. Kokla, M. A. Mostafavi, F. Noardo, and A. Spanò

Keywords: semantic description, spatial objects, ontology, historical buildings, fortified structures and castles

Abstract. Architectural, built heritage and historical buildings embody cultural heritage value and - as known - they need to be studied, documented, persevered and represented. Although there are many fields involved in these activities, none of these considered individually can fully represent the heritage with a complete level of detail and information. The present work aims to investigate the different levels of detail and granularity among different communities involved in historical buildings tasks to semantically define different concepts. In this context, ontologies are considered as an effective solution for the formal conceptualization of the domains involved, providing a common language for knowledge sharing and reuse. The study starts from existing knowledge (standards, vocabularies, thesauri, classifications) and conceptualisations for regional, urban and architectural heritage and geographic information for various tasks (restoration, documentation and heritage studies, risk prevention, heritage asset and facility management, education and tourism, urban planning and energy refurbishment/performance). A specific use case involving historical buildings in fortified centres across different levels of detail is described to show how existing knowledge and standards conceptualisation need to be integrated and extended.