Introduction to an Ontology-Driven Documentation System of Damages to Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Deriving from the complex nature of cultural heritage conservation and its heterogeneous tasks it is the need for enhancing a systematic but flexible organization of expert knowledge in the field. Such organization should address comprehensively the interrelations and complementariness among the different factors that come into play in the understanding of diagnostic and intervention problems. The purpose of the system introduced in this paper, called MONDIS, is to endorse this kind of organization. The system allows replicating in a computer readable form the basic dependence among factors influencing the description, diagnosis and intervention of damages to immovable objects. More specifically MONDIS allows to input and search entries concerning object description, structural evolution, location characteristics and risk, component, material properties, surveys and measurements, damage typology, damage triggering events and possible interventions. The system supports searching features typical of standard databases, as it allows for the digitalization of a wide range of information including professional reports, books, articles and scientific papers. It also allows for computer aided retrieval of information tailored to user's requirements. The approach consists in formalising an ontological representation of the field of heritage conservation compatible with the professional approach commonly employed to processing of data. The paper also presents a series of applications which run on such ontology, including a web-based interface for data inputting, a terminology editor for defining and searching a pictographic glossary of all terms stored in the system, a knowledge matrix for browsing the cause-effect relationships in damage formation together with insights on possible interventions and a mobile application for supporting in-situ condition assessment of buildings.