European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage – Innovative Tools for Digitisation and Analysis

ExpectedOutcome:Projects should contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:The European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) is widely used by European cultural heritage professionals and researchers[1] for digitising dynamic objects, processes and practices[2].The ECCCH is widely used by European cultural heritage professionals and researchers for monitoring the evolving status of cultural heritage objects[3] over time.The ECCCH is widely used by European cultural heritage professionals and researchers for advanced interaction with digital content, enabling new ways to interact, cross-mix and re-mix different data types, enhancing insight capabilities and representation potential.European cultural heritage professionals and researchers are provided with clear information as well as targeted training modules on the innovative tools and methods developed. Scope:This topic aims at developing and implementing a set of innovative tools and methods on the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) for digitisation and analysis of dynamic processes, objects and complex combined data. Concrete applications of these tools and methods should be provided for at least the following uses:Digitising dynamic objects, processes and practicesMonitoring the evolving status of cultural heritage objects over timeInteracting with, cross-mixing and re-mixing different data types Digitisation of dynamic objects, processes and practicesThe main focus of 3D digitisation initiatives in the realm of cultural heritage has thus far been the shape and appearance of static objects. Practical techniques and technologies that enable accurate physical simulations of digitised items are mostly unexplored. Mechanical characteristics like stiffness, flexibility, mass distribution and strength, as well as mechanisms and moving parts are still largely undocumented. However, many heritage objects, including human-made devices, machines or practices, exhibit dynamic behaviours. Making adequate and precise digital models of such items and phenomena would enable more realistic simulations of, for instance, ancient artefacts like tissues, mechanisms, tools or practices, which would facilitate more insightful analysis and understanding.For this use, projects funded under this topic should develop new digitisation approaches enabling the correct capture of mechanical and dynamic characteristics of objects and practices.Monitoring the evolving status of cultural heritage objects over timeMonitoring the evolution over time of a heritage object is a key task in many cultural heritage contexts. This involves monitoring very slow phenomena (e.g. changes in the reflection attributes of a painted surface) as well as very rapid ones (for example fractures introduced by an abrupt event, such as damages to a loan artwork while traveling, or to a monument due to a seismic impact). The accurate sampling and detection of such changes occurring over time requires a number of new and integrated technologies: shape & colour sampling, use of networks of sensors displaced in a space, data integration, and software technologies able to make comparisons and to assess the changes. Innovative AI-based solutions may be developed to characterise and detect the changes, subject to the validation of human experts.For this use, projects funded under this topic should develop new digitisation approaches enabling an unprecedented capability to monitor the evolution over time of the status of heritage objects.Interacting with, cross-mixing and re-mixing different data typesMixing and integrating different media and media types in effective ways can expand insight capabilities, and lead to new knowledge generation. Projects funded under this topic should develop innovative tools and methods that give the ECCCH ground-breaking capabilities in this area.For this use, projects funded under this topic should explore how different media can be combined, using both the space and time axes, and how the creative processes involved can be supported. Such new methods will require studying new interaction modes, enabling the navigation over different media types and spaces (2D, 3D, text, …), and creating a common cross-media interaction language. Users should easily be able to use multiple media in a coordinated manner, for instance for the visual presentation and analysis of heritage objects (e.g. interconnecting 3D and text to tell the story of an artwork, intermixing the navigation of a 3D space and panoramic images to present both spatial and surface colour/reflection characteristics in an accurate manner, enabling the navigation of datasets which join 3D scanned external surfaces with computer tomography scanned data of the interior, or using 3D and images in the documentation of restoration). The tools and methods developed should allow the representation of non-static heritage, such as industrial heritage with many complex machines and processes. As an alternative to producing full digital models of complex machinery, which may be excessively expensive, different media may be combined to represent the dynamic essence of such assets with less effort, for instance using 3D models for the static characteristics of a machinery and adding video and sound to enhance the dynamic experience.The work produced may be implemented as new specific tools, and/or as extensions to the functional libraries included in the core ECCCH platform.With a view to use resources efficiently and go beyond the state of the art, projects funded under this topic should, where appropriate, build on previous existing research, methods and solutions. Proposals should therefore ensure that existing tools and methods and their potential (re-)use are properly examined.Ease of use for the target users is of paramount importance. Therefore, tools and methods should be developed in close collaboration with actively involved representative target users. Furthermo