Semantic annotations on heritage models: 2D/3D approaches and future research challenges

Research in the field of Cultural Heritage is increasingly moving towards the creation of digital information systems, in which the geometric representation of an artifact is linked to some external information, through meaningful tags. The process of attributing additional and structured information to various elements in a given digital model is customarily identified with the term semantic annotation; the added contextual information is associated, for instance, to analysis and conservation terms. Starting from the existing literature, aim of this work is to discuss how semantic annotations are used, in digital architectural heritage models, to link the geometrical representation of an artefact with knowledge-related information. Most consolidated methods -such as traditional mapping on 2D media, are compared with more recent approaches making the most of 3D representation. Reference is made, in particular, to Heritage-BIM techniques and to collaborative reality-based platforms, such as Aïoli (http://aioli.cloud). Potentialities and limits of the different solutions proposed in literature are critically discussed, also addressing future research challenges in Cultural Heritage application fields.