Title: “Cultural Heritage Survey: an Ontology Design Pattern”
Authors: Silvia Cappa, Alessandra Chirivì, Hüseyin Erdoğan, Maria Chiara Frangipane, Matteo Greco, Giorgia Lodi, Andrea Giovanni Nuzzolese, Valentina Presutti and Cristiano Putzolu.
Affiliations:
CNR – Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, Bologna, Italy
CNR – Institute of Heritage Science, Lecce, Italy
Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Department of History and Culture
BUP srl, Rome, Italy
Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Department of Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures
Award: Best SEMDH Paper
Date of the presentation: 10/05/2026
Event, venue:
SemDH 2026 – Third International Workshop of Semantic Digital Humanities
https://semdh.github.io/
hosted in: 23rd European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC)
https://2026.eswc-conferences.org/
Link to the paper: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4212/paper5.pdf
Abstract: This paper introduces the Cultural Heritage Survey Ontology Design Pattern (CHS-ODP), a content pattern that abstracts from specific implementations and provides a reference core for modelling survey processes within cultural heritage knowledge graphs. The pattern is grounded in a set of generalised competency questions derived from two independent real-world use cases: a Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)-based documentation campaign on rock art and a diagnostic investigation on illuminated manuscripts. Designed in alignment with CIDOC-CRM, ArCo, DOLCE UltraLight, the proposed pattern supports interoperable and reusable survey-centric modelling across heterogeneous cultural-heritage domains.
