A Social Platform to Support Citizens Reuse of Open 3D Visualisations: a Citizen Science Approach

Abstract

There is a growing interest in the world of Open Data, with many initiatives in the Cultural Heritage field. Platforms like Europeana, archive.org, Open Heritage by Google are only few examples of on-line catalogues full of open artefacts published with various formats. It is a new and promising way to engage public, such as, students, citizens, non-profit organisations. This paper faces the question of how to help audience in reusing Open 3D models and other artefacts available on Open Cultural Heritage repositories. The idea is to provide a Social Platform named SPOD where citizens can visualise artefacts, share and comment with others in a social way to increase understanding, awareness and engagement in cultural heritage. The foundation is the Datalet-Ecosystem Provider (DEEP), an open source, extensible, scalable, and Edge-centric visualisation architecture to support reuse of visualisations of Open Data in Cultural Heritage. It consists of reusable, dynamic and interactive visualizations named datalets. It includes a variety of visualisations, charts, geographical maps and 3D visualisations. Datalets can be generated and embedded in any web-page as well. SPOD exploits the DEEP architecture to support users within the platform in generating visualisations of Open artefacts, reuse and share them within discussions.