Developing Support for the Heritage Digital Twin in Conservation

• Autor(a) principal: Franco, Pedro Miguel da Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/163561
• topic: Digital Heritage; Digital Twin; Digital Heritage Conservation; Heritage Artefacts; Digital Twin in Conservation Studies; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática

Current technological advances and tools are bringing multiple benefits to the conservation area. One of those innovations is the use of the DigitalTwin concept in conservation studies, allowing researchers to see and interact with the most possible complete representation of the artefact, its spanning life cycle and enabling continuous updates. This concept allows quality access to an enhanced representation of the artefact, focusing on the capacity of layering multiple visual descriptions, on one integrated interface. This work aims to create a system to the VICARTE research unit where the concept of Digital Twin is applied to conservation and restoration studies, where the main objectives are to preserve, protect and restore heritage artefacts. To achieve that, an initial prototype was built, which allows to insert, view, interact, and analyse the abundant data related to a few historical artefacts from the Fitzwilliam Museum and Palácio Nacional da Ajuda. Although most related data is very technical, we aimed to develop a web interface easily accessible for both researchers and the public. The system includes a data storage structure, a database service, where multimedia data (e.g. pictures) and textual data about the artefacts are stored and organised. A website was also developed, focusing on providing enhanced interaction with artefacts’ information for researchers and the public, enabling understanding and insight regarding the artefacts. To be able to transfer data from the website to the database service, and vice-versa, a server was also designed and developed. Throughout the system development process, there were several evaluation moments. However, the most significant of these was the conducted usability study, which assessed the tool’s functionalities and its satisfaction levels among users. The results of the study indicated that users generally found the application moderately difficult to use and reported average satisfaction levels when interacting with the application.