3D Modelling and Semantic Enrichment in Cultural Heritage

Three-dimensional representation is becoming an effective support for the documentation of the state of conservation of heritage artefacts, for the study of transformations of the built environment and for cultural dissemination. New 3D digitisation technologies now offer effective means to observe and analyse historic buildings with more accuracy, completeness and timeliness. Nevertheless, the application of these new technologies produces a real problem of information overload. The growing mass of point clouds, 3D models, un-interpreted data make indeed emerge a great need for innovative methodologies assisting data processing, sorting and analysis by researchers who want to use it for advancing the knowledge on cultural heritage. This article presents a synthesis of several research works carried out at the MAP Laboratory (CNRS/MCC) in the last years concerning the geometric modelling and the semantic enrichment of spatial data related to historic buildings through the design and the development of methods, formalisms and tools. These research works aim to identify the potential of structuring heterogeneous data within semantically enriched 3D models of heritage buildings according to multiple contexts: shape analysis, documentation of the state of conservation, indexation and retrieval of iconographic sources, representation of spatiotemporal transformations.