Track 09 – Collaborative Cloud for CH (ECHOES)
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• Emanuel Demetrescu – CNR ISPC, Italy • Sorin Hermon – Cyprus Institute, Cyprus
Collaborative Cloud for CH (ECHOES SESSION)
Application of LiDAR Sensors for the Reconstruction of the Production Techniques of
Artificial Conglomerate Blocks: the Case of the Maconi Tower - Siena (Italy)
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Gioele Rossi, Jacopo Bruttini, Stefano Camporeale, Fabio Gabbrielli, Marco Giamello, and
Enrico Tavarnelli
Designing a Virtual Museum Ecosystem for the Cloud
Alan Miller, Catherine Cassidy, Sharon Pisani, Maria Andrei, Junyu Zhang, Sarah Kennedy,
Iain Oliver, Jacquie Aitken, Ray Williams, and Vanessa Martin
Straniere: a Digital Archive on the Reception of non-European Arts and Cultures in Italy
(1945-2000)
Caterina Toschi, Livia de Pinto, Biancalucia Maglione, and Rachele Zanone
Smart Collection Ingestion in the European Cultural Heritage Cloud: Toward Scalable,
Semantically Enriched, Interoperable Cataloguing
Paolo Ongaro, Sam Habibi Minelli, Daniele Duranti, Naomi Poli, Martina Rossi, Daniele
Ugoletti, Rubino Saccoccio, and Alberto Raggioli
The IMPULSE Project: Advancing Immersive Digitization for Sustainable Digital Cultural
Heritage Integration within ECCCH.
Lorela Mehmeti, Margherita Ascari, Valentina Gianfrate, Zaneta Zeglen, Dimitris Charitos,
and George Anastassakis
The collaborative Basilica Iulia Project: A Digital Knowledge Ecosystem for Integrated
Archaeological Research
Emanuel Demetrescu, Tommaso Ismaelli, Simone Berto, Sara Bozza, Giacomo Casa, Marika
Griffo, Rachele Manganelli del Fá, and Eleonora Scopinaro
Towards the Definition of the Heritage Digital Twin Ontology for the European Collaborative
Cloud for Cultural Heritage
Maria Theodoridou, Florian Hivert, Athina Kritsotaki, Béatrice Markhoff, Martin Doerr, and
Sorin Hermon
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item The IMPULSE Project: Advancing Immersive Digitization for Sustainable Digital Cultural Heritage Integration within ECCCH.(The Eurographics Association, 2025) Mehmeti, Lorela; Ascari, Margherita; Gianfrate, Valentina; Zeglen, Zaneta; Charitos, Dimitris; Anastassakis, George; Campana, Stefano; Ferdani, Daniele; Graf, Holger; Guidi, Gabriele; Hegarty, Zackary; Pescarin, Sofia; Remondino, FabioThis article critically analyses the assumptions of the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) and explores how the impact and results of the ongoing IMPULSE project can contribute to and integrate within its broader framework. In particular, IMPULSE offers a relevant testing ground for ECCCH to advance the management of immersive digital cultural heritage objects. A key focus is on the sustainability of IMPULSE's outcomes and their potential to address the fragmentation that characterizes the digital cultural heritage landscape. This fragmentation affects different aspects of the digitization process, such as technical issues, standardization, interoperability, user experience, and legal dimensions. Many cultural collections in Europe are still not digitized, with significantly low figures for high-quality three-dimensional representations essential for scientific collaboration. Existing standards and methodologies are neither uniform, traceable, nor fully secure, and practical techniques enabling accurate physical simulations of digitized heritage objects remain largely unexplored. Against this issue, IMPULSE is positioned to develop and test new approaches connected to metadata standardisation and immersive interaction with digital objects that capture not only the visual but also the dynamic characteristics of cultural heritage assets and practices. Starting from the analysis of these aspects and in view of the alignment with the strategic objectives of the European Commission, IMPULSE's ongoing research contributes to technical de-fragmentation by providing the development of an EU-based Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE) for visualising and interacting with 3D assets. Its approach emphasizes interoperability, ensuring that data formats, protocols, and tools align with existing cultural heritage infrastructures, making integration into platforms and digital twins more feasible. IMPULSE research is also aimed at defining protocols and tools to provide data in a standardised and easily understandable format, based on three IMPULSE prototypes. The ongoing research on IMPULSE is relevant when considering uninvolved users, as it provides prototypes and tests of immersive interaction geared towards diverse audiences (academics, artists, cultural and creative industries). By focusing on immersive interaction with CH objects in virtual environments, IMPULSE contributes not only to advancing digital heritage methodologies but also to ensuring their sustainability and integration within the ECCCH.Item Application of LiDAR Sensors for the Reconstruction of the Production Techniques of Artificial Conglomerate Blocks: the Case of the Maconi Tower - Siena (Italy)(The Eurographics Association, 2025) Rossi, Gioele; Bruttini, Jacopo; Camporeale, Stefano; Gabbrielli, Fabio; Giamello, Marco; Tavarnelli, Enrico; Campana, Stefano; Ferdani, Daniele; Graf, Holger; Guidi, Gabriele; Hegarty, Zackary; Pescarin, Sofia; Remondino, FabioThe Maconi tower, dating back to around the 12th century and belonging to one of the leading families of medieval Siena, is characterised, in its internal and external façades, by a wall made of limestone blocks, reused bricks and large blocks of artificial conglomerate. The latter, the subject of this research and also visible in other buildings in the city, are parallelepiped in shape and are made of mortar and angular stone elements, with a texture that varies depending on the size and shape of the aggregates, as well as the processing of the blocks themselves. The aim of the research was to verify the effectiveness of new three-dimensional survey methodologies for the documentation and morphological analysis of artificial conglomerate blocks, in order to understand the production system of the latter. To this end, the LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology integrated into Apple IPhone PRO devices was used, with which it was possible to obtain detailed 3D scans with the help of a free application and an electronic stabilizer, all accompanied by measurements with traditional systems (comb profiler), used to verify the method. The study concerned, in particular, the evaluation of the roughness of the external surface of the blocks, or the three-dimensional shape of the external faces, as a possible indicator for understanding the methods of construction and processing. The analysis of the surface texture, obtained through three-dimensional scanning, highlighted two types of surfaces in relation to the variation values between the level of the mortar and the top of the stone elements: the first type shows a significant variation, while the second has a more contained difference, indicating a different degree of irregularity. The investigations conducted allowed us to quantify the roughness of the artificial conglomerate blocks, highlighting variations compatible with different exposure to atmospheric agents and/or different construction methods.Item Designing a Virtual Museum Ecosystem for the Cloud(The Eurographics Association, 2025) Miller, Alan; Cassidy, Catherine; Pisani, Sharon; Andrei, Maria; Zhang, Junyu; Kennedy, Sarah; Oliver, Iain; Aitken, Jacquie; Williams, Ray; Martin, Vanessa; Campana, Stefano; Ferdani, Daniele; Graf, Holger; Guidi, Gabriele; Hegarty, Zackary; Pescarin, Sofia; Remondino, FabioDigital exhibits are often commissioned from specialist organisations for a premium price and only available to prestigious national and international organisations that have the budget to match. Yet developments in underlying technologies, such as commodity computers, mobiles and networks, are increasingly capable of delivering rich heritage experiences. Consequently, the possibility of immersive and mobile technologies becoming part of the normal offering of community museums is in reach. A virtual museum ecosystem, which empowers community-based museums to embrace technologies to digitally enhance the capacities of a museum supporting the research, collection, curation and communication of heritage, has the potential both to contribute to sustainable development as well as mitigate against the threats to heritage.Item Straniere: a Digital Archive on the Reception of non-European Arts and Cultures in Italy (1945-2000)(The Eurographics Association, 2025) Toschi, Caterina; Pinto, Livia de; Maglione, Biancalucia; Zanone, Rachele; Campana, Stefano; Ferdani, Daniele; Graf, Holger; Guidi, Gabriele; Hegarty, Zackary; Pescarin, Sofia; Remondino, FabioThe short paper will present the results of the project entitled ''Straniere: the reception of non-European arts and cultures in Italy (1945-2000)'' (PI: Caterina Toschi). The project aims to examine the different visual, critical and exhibition readings that have been produced in Italy of non-Western arts, investigating some case studies inherent to the history of the market, exhibitions, publications, artistic and photographic research that have presented non-Western works and artifacts or have absorbed their characters, thus introducing in Italy new interpretative and representative paradigms of these ''foreign'' arts. The main milestone, and thus the main goal of the project, is a digital archive, in collaboration with CNR ISTI and Artificial Intelligence for Media and Humanities (AIMH), in which visual and textual sources documenting forms of reading, interpretation, paraphrase or presentation in Italy of non-European arts and cultures from 1945 to 2000 have been investigated, digitized and annotated. The short paper aims to present this scientific tool-host in the University for Foreigners of Siena's digital caveau designed and created by the company Promemoria-which is interoperable with all the archives involved in the research (Fondazione Centro Studi sull'Arte Licia e Carlo Ludovico, Cesare Brandi Photo Library at the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena, Fondazione Alinari per la Fotografia | FAF Toscana, CSAC - Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione of the University of Parma, Archivio Luciano Caruso, Fondazione Passaré per la Promozione e lo Sviluppo delle Arti Primarie, Museo delle Civiltà of Rome, Mudec - Museo delle Culture of Milan, Museo d'Arte Cinese ed Etnografico di Parma, MUSEC - Museo delle Culture di Lugano, Musei Civici di Reggio Emilia). In accordance with the European project to create a common and interoperable web space of data for cultural heritage (European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage), the University for Foreigners of Siena has created this digital, open access archive, developed in line with the ECHOES Conceptual Model.Item Smart Collection Ingestion in the European Cultural Heritage Cloud: Toward Scalable, Semantically Enriched, Interoperable Cataloguing(The Eurographics Association, 2025) Ongaro, Paolo; Minelli, Sam Habibi; Duranti, Daniele; Poli, Naomi; Rossi, Martina; Ugoletti, Daniele; Saccoccio, Rubino; Raggioli, Alberto; Campana, Stefano; Ferdani, Daniele; Graf, Holger; Guidi, Gabriele; Hegarty, Zackary; Pescarin, Sofia; Remondino, FabioThis paper introduces the Collection Ingestion Tool (CIT), a modular and standards-compliant component within the ECHOES European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH). Designed to support scalable, interoperable, and semantically enriched cataloguing, the CIT addresses the pressing needs of cultural institutions-particularly small and medium-sized ones-facing technological, organizational, and multilingual barriers in metadata management. The CIT empowers curators, researchers, and archivists to ingest, annotate, and publish cultural datasets with enhanced discoverability and interoperability integrating advanced tools for NLP and AI-powered metadata enrichment, support for Heritage Digital Representations (HDRs) (e.g. 2D/3D and associated data, metadata and paradata) asset management, and alignment with heritage metadata standards. Built atop the ECHOES infrastructure, the tool benefits from shared services such as identity management, storage, and a federated Knowledge Base compatible with Heritage Digital Representations (HDRs) principles. Through a practical workflow scenario and alignment with FAIR and LOD principles, the paper demonstrates how the CIT enables cross-domain reuse, multilingual access, and enriched user experiences while fostering sustainability and community integration across Europe's heritage sector.Item Towards the Definition of the Heritage Digital Twin Ontology for the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage(The Eurographics Association, 2025) Theodoridou, Maria; Hivert, Florian; Kritsotaki, Athina; Markhoff, Béatrice; Doerr, Martin; Hermon, Sorin; Campana, Stefano; Ferdani, Daniele; Graf, Holger; Guidi, Gabriele; Hegarty, Zackary; Pescarin, Sofia; Remondino, FabioThe paper presents the definition of the ECHOES Heritage Digital Twin Ontology for cultural heritage. It is built upon the data model HDTO, improving and clarifying it with respect to the ECHOES Project objectives. ECHOES aims at setting up the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH), a shared platform designed to facilitate collaboration among heritage professionals and researchers. The ontology is being developed as a compatible extension of the ISO 2117:2023 CIDOC CRM standard for cultural heritage documentation.Item The collaborative Basilica Iulia Project: A Digital Knowledge Ecosystem for Integrated Archaeological Research(The Eurographics Association, 2025) Demetrescu, Emanuel; Ismaelli, Tommaso; Berto, Simone; Bozza, Sara; Casa, Giacomo; Griffo, Marika; Fá, Rachele Manganelli del; Scopinaro, Eleonora; Campana, Stefano; Ferdani, Daniele; Graf, Holger; Guidi, Gabriele; Hegarty, Zackary; Pescarin, Sofia; Remondino, FabioThe Basilica Iulia Project addresses the challenge of integrating heterogeneous archaeological data through a collaborative digital ecosystem based on the Extended Matrix (EM) framework and s3Dgraphy ontology. By transforming traditional disconnected workflows into an integrated environment aligned with CIDOC-CRM standards, the project enables seamless collaboration across architectural, archaeological, and conservation domains. The implementation demonstrates how open- source tools developed through a project-driven approach can create sustainable ''Living Lab'' environments for complex archaeological sites. Key innovations include the Data Transformation Chain (DTC) or process documentation and intuitive interfaces for multidisciplinary teams. The resulting framework, validated through the Basilica Iulia case study, provides a scalable model for digital archaeology that maintains scientific rigor while fostering cross-domain collaboration.