COMPUTER SCIENCE APPLICATIONS TO CULTURAL HERITAGE

The course provides a general view of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of Cultural Heritage. Specifically, students will acquire mechanisms and computational tools to manage the digitalization, storage, documentation, analysis, and fruition of cultural heritage resources.

After the course the student will:

- Understand the importance of ICT in the context of cultural heritage
- Master different digitization techniques depending on the nature of the heritage content to be acquired (image, sound, video, etc.)
- Be able to model and catalog the acquired data into a database
- Know different meta-data standards for cultural heritage
- Know the basic principles of Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
- Have a general understanding of the state-of-the-art visualization techniques to exploit the acquired digital heritage

No particular prerequisite is required

Media acquisition
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Digital images:
- Cameras
- Color vision and models
- Image data compression
- Standard image formats: tiff, gif, png, jpeg
- Multi-spectral imaging

Digital Audio:
- Sampling, quantization, encoding
- Audio compression

Digital Video:
- Video acquisition and compression
- Standard video formats

3D data acquisition:
- 3D scanning technologies and use studies
- 3D reconstruction pipeline



Storage and Organization
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Databases:
- Relational databases
- Document-oriented databases
- Big Data
- GIS (Geographic Information System)

Metadata:
- XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
- DTD and XML Schema
- Languages for metadata: RDF, Dublin Core, MPEG-7
- Examples of metadata applied to cultural heritage



Data Science
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Data mining:
- Document representation
- KDD (Knowledge Discovery in Databases)
- Clustering and Classification

Analysis:
- Data visualization and dimensionality reduction



Visualization
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- Web technologies and mobile apps
- Computer graphics
- Virtual and Augmented Reality
- Serious games for cultural heritage

- Alfredo M. Ronchi, "ECulture: Cultural Content in the Digital Age", Dordrecht : Springer. 2009
- Z. Li, M. Drew and J. Liu. "Fundamentals of Multimedia", Pearson Educational, 2014
- P. Lake, P. Crowther, "Concise Guide to Databases", Springer London, 2003

The assessment consists of a written examination in form of short answers or small essay. Questions cover all the arguments covered during the course and may include short exercises.

The teaching is aimed at allowing the student to gain practical competences in the choice and critical analysis of the digital technologies applied to cultural heritage. The course is composed of frontal lessons and optional laboratory sessions to let the student experiment with the concepts discussed in class.
Additional material not covered in the textbooks will be provided by means of PowerPoint presentations, images, videos, and other multimedia content. Practical examples will be shown during the course to contextualize each concept to the field of cultural heritage.

English

written