DataSpace-ISPC: a Semantic Platform for Heritage Science

The contribution presents the DataSpace of the Institute of Heritage Science (ISPC) of the Italian National Council for Research. Cultural Heritage is well known to be a multidisciplinary domain where heterogeneous data, methods and techniques overlap, co-exist and collaborate to create evidence-based wisdom represented with local and (rarely) inter-operable standards. DataSpace aims to overcome the need to harmonise converging research perspectives, allow collaborative research, and de-babelize the presentation of data. This horizontal perspective is based on a graph of knowledge, ruled by a semantic reference model, and acts as a glue to connect different digital resources created with different perspectives. The DataSpace, which is built on top of the Arches platform integrated and customised with original tools, has been validated with positive results against two case studies to cover the wider domain of Heritage Science. The contribution explains the activities and technological solutions adopted and goes into detail about the problems and limitations that arose with the implementation of the DataSpace offering a critical yet positive perspective on the use of the DataSpace-ISPC in production scenarios.