Monuments of L’Aquila as Shared Heritage

Klaus Werner

This research project, undertaken together with Cristiana Pasqualetti of the Department of Human Sciences (Università degli Studi dell‘Aquila) and colleagues Elisa Bastianello and Alessandro Adamou of the BHMPI, originated in the digitization of historical texts about L'Aquila and its territory with the aim of providing the overview of the preserved, lost or displaced historical-artistic and architectural heritage in order to make it shared and accessible to all.
The project is based upon a combination of Wikidata (for the structured description aspect and external data aggregation via statements) and Openstreetmap (for the geospatial aspect) to remain non-proprietary, widely shared, interoperable, and, most importantly, sustainable. Aggregation is done at various levels, either as a mere link (or deep link) to an external Web resource or as direct access to data in JSON or RDF.  An important aspect is interoperability with advanced Graph and SPARQL technologies that render individual aspects – monuments, people, places – as a network. The geospatial aspect – essential for a cultural map of the territory – is achieved through a connection with the Openstreetmap vector data.