Semantic interoperability for cultural heritage conservation: Workflow from ontologies to a tool for managing and sharing data

Abstract

The benefits of using BIM in the construction sector are now widely recognised. From this awareness comes the aspiration to have the same advantages for the Cultural Heritage (CH) sector, to obtain more sustainability in the process. Indeed, research in recent years has been orientated in this direction. Attempts to use BIM tools to CH have shown the limits of the ability to correctly represent and transmit information, especially on cultural value and conservation activities, and on the presence of available objects, due to the lack of specific content in IFC, which means a lack of interoperability. The provision of ontologies is necessary to allow interoperability. Ontologies permit the conceptualization of a representative model of reality by defining classes, attributes, and relationships that describe a domain. The research experiments and proposes a flowchart to connect a specific ontological model for Cultural Heritage in a BIM environment. Using Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), it is possible to modify, improve, and adapt the functions according to the specific needs of users. In addition, this paper analyses the interconnectivity among three software in the BIM environment: FreeCAD, ArchiCAD and Revit, and the steps for an exchange of information between the geometric model and its semantic properties are established. The decorated umbrella vault of Masegra Castle in Sondrio was selected as a case study to show the application of the method and your tool.