1. Feb. 10, 2010 Second Review Meeting
Archaeology & Cultural Heritage
Application Working Group
Manolis Vavalis, CERETETH
Marios Pitikakis, CERETETH
Chiara Catalano, CNR
Patrick Salamin, EPFL

2. Content
Introduction
Background
Activity summary
Thematic workshop
Position Statements
Critical Problems
Selected Real-life Scenarios
Virtual exhibition, crowd animation workflow,
automatic identification, …
A&CH and Knowledge Management Synergies
Open Problems and Future Directions

3. Content
Introduction
Background
Activity summary
Thematic workshop
Position Statements
Critical Problems
Selected Real-life Scenarios
Virtual exhibition, crowd animation workflow,
automatic identification, …
A&CH and Knowledge Management Synergies
Open Problems and Future Directions

4. A&CH Characteristics (1/2)
A&CH 3D digital content is becoming more and
more demanding
Operational A&CH 3D use in its infancy
Most A&CH stakeholders are relatively far away
from IT
There currently exist (few?) strong objections
on the current use of 3D graphics in A&CH
Semantics (ontologies in fact) penetrated A&CH
a century ago

5. A&CH Characteristics (2/2)
Currently semantic organization of A&CH
restricted to non-3D media
A&CH people desperately need to
Organize
Search and Retrieve
Compare
Validate and
Present
their 3D content.

6. AWG members summary
Total AWG members: 31
Total 18 AWG members acquired in the 1st
year (6 based on existing contacts)
Total 13 AWG members acquired in the 2nd
year (all new contacts)

7. 1st year AWG members
Alinari 24 ORE, Italy *
Arkaia srl, Italy
BK s.r.l., Italy
Centro Interdipartimentale di Servizi di Archeologia
– Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale, Italy
CRS4, Italy
Cultural Technologies, Jordan *
Cyprus Institute, Cyprus
European Virtual Engineering Technological Centre (EUVE), Spain
Foundation of the Hellenic World, Greece *
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Germany
Giunti Labs S.r.l., Italy *
Institute of Computer Graphics, TU Graz, Austria
MellaniuM, UK
MUSEUM VOLKENKUNDE, The Netherlands
Sabanci University / Computer Graphics Laboratory, Turkey *
Technische Universität Darmstadt, Interactive Graphics Systems
Group, Germany
TELECOM, LIFL (UMR USTL/CNRS 8022), France
University of Patras – High Performance Information Systems
Laboratory, Greece *
University of Thessaly, Dept. Of History, Archaeology and Social
Anthropology, Greece
• Interested only
in A&CH AWG
• Interested in
multiple AWGs
• * Based on
existing contacts

8. 2nd year AWG new contacts
Geographic Information Visualization and Analysis, Department of Geography,
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Giusi Grimaudo, TESI Archeologia s.r.l, Italy
Mario Santana, Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation, Belgium
Marco Rendina, Centro per la Ricerca e lo Sviluppo di Metodologie e Applicazioni di
Archivi Storici, Italy
Breuckmann GmbH, Germany
Laura Baratin, University of Urbino, Italy
Nadezhda Ilyina, 3DreamTeam, Russia & Czech Republic
Riccardo Berta, ELIOS Lab, University of Genoa, Italy
Maria Economou, Dept. of Cultural Technology & Communication, Univ. of Aegean,
Greece
Livio De Luca, MAP-Gamsau Laboratory, CNRS, France
Stavroula Zoi, Multimedia-Hypermedia Lab, Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece
Communications Research Centre (CRC), Canada *
Efi Nanna, National Center for Archaeology Research, Greece *
** Questionnaire submitted Feb. 2010

9. Highlights of 2nd year activities
Thematic Workshop (at VSMM09)
Attended VSMM08 (and organized a workshop)
Workshop on “Serious Game in CH”
Approached the Underwater Archaeology
Community (IMATI)
Concrete plans for proposals and spin-offs
Collaboration with other EU projects:
3D-COFORM – Tools and Expertise for 3D
Collection Formation
PROBADO - Innovative Digital Library Services for
Nontextual Documents

10. Content
Introduction
Background
Activity summary
Thematic workshop
Position Statements, Outcomes
Critical Problems
Selected Real-life Scenarios
Virtual exhibition, crowd animation workflow,
automatic identification, …
A&CH and Knowledge Management Synergies
Open Problems and Future Directions

11. Thematic Workshop - organization
“3D Knowledge Technologies for Cultural
Heritage Applications” was held on
12 September 2009, Vienna, Austria,
Half a day event in conjunction with the 15th International
Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia - VSMM 2009.
An official workshop webpage was developed in the
FOCUS K3D portal
was also advertised at the VSMM09 web pages.
Position statements were circulated to the workshop
speakers before the event took place.
More than 24 participants attended + 5 people from
FOCUS K3D partners (CERETETH, IMATI and EPFL).
Most participants came from academic and research
institutions.

12. Thematic Workshop - program
09:00 – 09:20 Introduction to the workshop : the FOCUS K3D initiative
(Michela Spagnuolo, IMATI)
09:20 – 9:40 3D-COFORM - Tools and Expertise for 3D Collection Formation
(Franco Niccolucci, STARC-Cyprus Institute)
09:40 – 10:20 Invited talk: The e-documentation of the Past in 3D: A
Challenge and a Risk for the Present and the Future (Marinos Ioannidis, EC &
STARC-Cyprus Institute)
10:20 – 10:40 Serious Games in Cultural Heritage Field (Riccardo Berta, ELIOS
Lab, University of Genoa)
10:55 – 11:15 Virtual Humans in Cultural Heritage projects (Patrick Salamin,
EPFL)
11:15 – 11:35 Integrating 3D digital technologies for CH: issues and
perspectives (Andrea D'Andrea, Franco Niccolucci)
11:35 – 12:05 A semantic-based framework for managing, searching and
retrieving 3D resources (Marios Pitikakis, CERETETH & Chiara Catalano, IMATI-CNR)
12:05 – 12:20 Knowledge technologies in Cultural Heritage (position statement)
(Manolis Vavalis, CERETETH & Univ. of Thessaly)
12:20 – 13:00 Open discussion

13. Thematic Workshop – position statements
3D digital representations are often neglected in efforts to
create large-scale libraries
lack in effort by cultural heritage institutions to acquire and use knowledge
about 3D content.
Whereas text and image digitization and management are rather
mature technologies, the technology necessary to fully benefit
from 3D knowledge management is not yet within easy reach of
most cultural institutions and professionals.
A major challenge towards semantic 3D data management is to provide
effective content-based and semantic-based organization and
searching.
Content organization is a fundamental service that
helps the user to navigate and formulate queries.
allows an efficient retrieval of the content of interest, which could
strongly reduce a large amount of unproductive time.

14. Thematic Workshop – position statements
Current limitations are mostly related to the lack of specialized
tools for 3D knowledge management.
Open problems and future directions to promote and exploit
knowledge technologies for 3D content in the Cultural Heritage
and Archaeology domain could be focused on the following
challenges:
Facilitate automatic semantic annotation of 3D digital
content;
Enhancement of data repositories to exploit and reuse
semantic annotations;
Intelligent discovery and retrieval of 3D models by
improving the efficiency of semantic search engines and
their integration with geometric search engines.

15. Thematic Workshop – other outcomes
Contact has been made to directly participate and
contribute to the European Digital Library (EDL).
Interact with people involved in related fields (serious
games, virtual environments & simulations) and
understand their perspective.
A number of critical problems revealed

16. Critical Problems (1/4)
Acquisition and processing of 3D data
Traceability to sources and data provenance must be
guaranteed. An ontological approach could be a solution.
Not only geometry has to be acquired but also
colours, materials and the information related to the object
have to be preserved.
3D compression has to be addressed.
Search and retrieval
Indexing and 3D Object Retrieval have to be
addressed.

17. Critical Problems (2/4)
Documentation and annotation
The annotations attached to the objects’ geometry
might be lost when the geometry changes due to
various reasons. Preserving semantics in the process
would be crucial.
Adopting a holistic approach to heritage
documentation, integrating text, 2D and 3D, requires
an ontological approach.
There is a management issue and conflict between
preservation and provenance.
The Semantic (3D-) Web and 3D TV has to be
accessed also through other devices, such as mobiles.
Watermarking has to be addressed.

18. Critical Problems (3/4)
Visualization
Real time management of the 3D data representation
and visualization has to be treated, also considering the
profile of the users.
Different solutions to visualize documented information
gathered during the 3D model creation can be
envisaged (whether a model is created from scratch or
captured/digitized).

19. Critical Problems (4/4)
Standardization
There no consensus in the CH world on metadata
standards. It is necessary to demonstrate the
effectiveness and viability of “better” solutions.
In view of long-term preservation, there are many
proprietary data formats by hardware vendors.
The evolution in Standards for Metadata has to be
combined with the revolution in computer hardware
and software.

20. General Observations
Audience was in agreement with our point of
view and our position statements.
Decision makers are not aware of the potential
of 3D for Cultural Heritage.
Not aware of our work in AIM@SHAPE
they were favourably surprised by their usefulness
and effectiveness.

21. Content
Introduction
Background
Activity summary
Thematic workshop
Position Statements
Critical Problems
Selected Real-life Scenarios
Virtual exhibition, crowd animation workflow,
automatic identification, …
A&CH and Knowledge Management Synergies
Open Problems and Future Directions

22. Virtual exhibition scenario - motivation
In collaboration with an AWG member (MellaniuM)
Enabling technologies
Latest game engines (e.g. UNREAL v2.5)
Hardware 3D graphical acceleration video cards
The key to effective virtual realism,
creation of an environment so well conceived interpretively
that the user becomes emotionally involved in the content of
the simulation.
Users desire to experience a design that has been
created in terms of lighting effects, finishes, surface
textures, layout and construction details which will lend
itself to a complete suspension of disbelief.

23. (a) (b)
(c) (d)
Temple of Horus complex (courtesy of MellaniuM) (a) Courtyard near the Entrance to the Hypostyle Hall, (b) Passing
through the Hypostyle Hall, (c) Inside the Sanctuary, (d) A chariot outside the Temple of Horus complex

24. Virtual exhibition scenario - motivation
Museum applications in the future could be used in
combination with delivery client (e.g. like the Nortel
web.alive). It will be possible in the near future with
one URL web link click to enter along with up to 50
others to explore and learn about any ancient site or
virtual exhibit.

25. Geometry and Knowledge Synergy
The benefits of adding semantic information in the different
stages of the reconstruction and presentation of an artifact
or an entire virtual space are twofold.
From the modeler/creator of 3D content
perspective, re-creating an ancient artifact in 3D or
an ancient site (architectural space) is difficult and
time-consuming work.
Based on available data (pictures, drawings, maps, etc.) and
close collaboration with archaeologists, architects, historians
In A&CH, object semantics are typically just as
important as the actual geometry.
The importation of high polygon models and rich object
textures is a key issue for creating the necessary
realism.

26. Geometry and Knowledge Synergy
Form the virtual visitors perspective the
organization and presentation of A&CH is crucial.
Developing educational/training application scenarios
and environments which are visually complex and
information-rich are a very effective learning tool.
The overall experience of a student or virtual tourist is
defined by the virtual reality representation / re-
creation. The idea of learning as an active, self-
directed, and context-dependent process can greatly
contribute to gaining new knowledge.

27. Geometry and Knowledge Synergy
Embedding semantic information and descriptive
metadata related to the original source, age, design
and existing knowledge on associated artifacts can be
connected effectively to any 3D item in the
environment and can contribute to the overall
experience.
By introducing small unobtrusive icons within the 3D
models, which can be approached on the screen, the
user will automatically be directed to other sources of
information (e.g. web pages, images, movies etc)
Such semantic interactivity is vital to produce an
environment that will encompass both a truly
informative and a sensory experience resulting in an
academically accurate and effective educational space.

28. Vhuman crowd animation workflow
Motivation
Focus on the importance of populating virtual
A&CH worlds with virtual humans (with natural
behavior).
Different steps to create a crowd of animated
avatars (virtual humans) in order to animate it
with a game engine.
The requirements and constraints while
working with crowds (avatar behavior, collision
avoidance, appearance, movement).

29. Automatic Identification
The model input is processed for automated
annotation
A generic ontology is available
The semantic analyzer combines the results of
the annotations and the ontology to input it into
the inference engine module

30. Content
Introduction
Background
Activity summary
Thematic workshop
Position Statements
Critical Problems
Selected Real-life Scenarios
Virtual exhibition, crowd animation workflow,
automatic identification, …
A&CH and Knowledge Management Synergies
Open Problems and Future Directions

31. Synopsis, Open Problems and Future Directions
A&CH 3D digital content is becoming more and more
demanding in terms of
management, preservation, delivery mechanisms…
3D A&CH content often is
hard to access and interpret
held in multiple internal systems
with non-standard schemas and descriptions.
The unavoidable manual annotation of explicit
semantics is not a practical approach
especially when the number of resources is expected to grow
fast.

32. Indicative Open Problems – Future directions
The technology necessary to fully benefit from 3D
knowledge management is not yet within easy reach of
most cultural institutions.
further progress in research and consolidation of approaches
is required in the area of 3D digital libraries.
Long-term preservation, re-use and access to 3D digital
objects are major concerns
the development of standardized metadata and ontologies
can partially ensure this.
Semantically enriched descriptions, indexing, and
retrieval will allow the deep integration of 3D content
into Digital Libraries.

33. Indicative Open Problems – Future directions
Current limitations are mostly related to the
lack of specialized tools for 3D knowledge
management and methodologies – as also our
questionnaire survey revealed.
Develop particular solutions for improved re-
use of 3D datasets by end-users.
Developing easy-to-use authoring tools for 3D
knowledge management.
Promote access to 3D content through the
European Digital Library.