Collaborative Platform to Leverage Enriched 3D Models in the Preservation of Cultural Heritage

The preservation of Cultural Heritage artefacts is a very complex endeavour that requires significant resources and knowledge from various domains, ranging from cultural to scientific and political aspects. These complex interactions involve many individuals that need to collaborate closely to achieve the best result. In the ChemiNova Project, funded by European Union, we are developing a FAIR compliant Cultural Heritage oriented platform that allows specialists to store digital information about the artefacts (digital tweens, accompanying documents, previous condition reports, etc.) and to collaborate in real-time or asynchronously on the available information. Proposed solution has at its core the concept of an Enriched 3D Model, which represents a 3D representation of the artefact enriched with information retrieved from: (1) scans performed with different sensors (RTI, hyperspectral, infrared, RGB, etc) which are synchronized over the same 3D mesh; (2) support documents (provenance, surroundings, previous restorations, etc); or (3) added by specialists directly into the platform within the analysis process in the form of annotations (digital marks placed on the 3D mesh and accompanied by any type of document – pictures, archives, numerical values, etc) or condition reports. Specialists can contribute collaboratively with information to the same artefact, while indicating the licencing available for the provided data. Our approach proposes an extendable architecture which is based on the concept of connected digital tools. Each tool encapsulates specific functionalities, technologies, data visualization capabilities and user interaction techniques, and communicates with all the other components through a secured and dedicated API, which ensures the consistency and security of the data stored into the Platform. This approach ensures that new tools can be developed and securely integrated into the platform at any time, through Single Sign On implementation, addressing specific needs and incorporating new technologies.