Validation of the BCH-Ontology

Abstract

In the heritage domain, capturing facts and knowledge for preventive conservation of Built Cultural Heritage (BCH) requires access to a large variety of data. It is a multidisciplinary activity and uses heterogeneous terminologies. In this regard, the BCH-ontology has been developed to facilitate integration and exchange of heterogeneous built cultural heritage information. The BCH-ontology reuses three already developed ontologies: Geneva City Geographic Markup Language (Geneva CityGML), Monument Damage ontology (Mondis), and CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM). Additionally, it provides a complete semantic framework by defining some classes and properties for improving BCH management. This paper presents the validation of the BCH-ontology ontological model to determine whether the ontology is able to represent BCH data under a preventive conservation approach. The San Luis seminary is a historical building built in the late XIX century in Cuenca-Ecuador and it is employed as use case. This validation allowed the identification of further use cases where the ontology offers a potential additional value in the BCH-domain.