Implementing the HERACLES Ontology - An Ontology as backbone for a Knowledge Base in the Cultural Heritage Protection Domain

Environmental factors, worsened by the increasing climate change impact, represent significant threats to European Cultural Heritage (CH) assets. In Europe, the huge number and diversity of CH assets, together with the different climatological sub-regions aspects, as well as the different adaptation policies to climate change adopted (or to be adopted) by the different nations, generate a very complex scenario. This paper will present a multidisciplinary methodology that will bridge the gap between two different worlds: the CH stakeholders and the scientific/technological experts. Since protecting cultural heritage assets and increasing their resilience against effects caused by the climate change is a multidisciplinary task, experts from many domains need to work together to meet their conservation goals. In this paper we introduce the HERACLES Ontology, which structures data and explicitly links adjacent data. Furthermore the implementation of the HERACLES Ontology within the HERACLES Knowledge Base is described. Use cases and benefits of the application are given. The ontology comprises the following topics: Cultural Heritage Assets, Stakeholders and Roles, Climate and Weather Effects, Risk Management, Conservation Actions, Materials, Sensors, Models and Observations, Standard Operation Procedures/Workflows and Damages.