A European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage – Innovative tools for digitising cultural heritage objects

Closed

Programme Category

EU Competitive Programmes

Programme Name

Horizon Europe (2021-2027)

Programme Description

Horizon Europe is the European Union (EU) funding programme for the period 2021 – 2027, which targets the sectors of research and innovation. The programme’s budget is around € 95.5 billion, of which € 5.4 billion is from NextGenerationEU to stimulate recovery and strengthen the EU’s resilience in the future, and € 4.5 billion is additional aid.

Programme Details

Identifier Code

HORIZON-CL2-2023-HERITAGE-ECCCH-01-02

Call

A European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage – Innovative tools for digitising cultural heritage objects

Summary

This topic aims at designing and implementing innovative tools and methods for digitisation of

  • visible characteristics
  • non-visible characteristics of cultural heritage objects, to be incorporated into the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH).

Detailed Call Description

There are still major needs in cultural heritage that require further research and innovation on more advanced digitisation tools and methods:

  • New AI-powered tools and methods that improve the digitisation process of tangible cultural heritage objects. The robustness and efficiency of the 3D digitisation process should be improved, especially in the case of massive digitisation (for example collections of objects). The accuracy and completeness of surface appearance acquisition should also be improved, as well as the mapping of complex reflectance data on digital surfaces. Furthermore, such solutions should yield new improved methods for post-processing and cleaning of the 3D models produced.
  • Improved methods for acquiring and processing enhanced 2D representations (e.g. reflectance transformation imaging, multispectral, panoramic), and for better integrating 2D representations with 3D representations.
  • Future 3D models need to encode other key attributes in addition to the usual geometric and reflectance data, such as local uncertainty information. New tools and methods are therefore needed to calculate and encode local accuracy limits with high precision in reconstructed 3D models. These tools should be capable of producing measurement-based limits of the similarity between the digital model and the physical object at any surface point, as well as algorithmically estimated accuracy boundaries.
  • To model a complex assembly is a costly effort, and today often requires dismounting the assembly – which is often not possible. Specific digitisation solutions should be developed that are capable of mixing various digitisation approaches (e.g. scanning and computer tomography scans) in order to capture dynamic or hidden characteristics of complex assemblies without dismounting them.

Proposals should focus on innovations at the data acquisition level, with a view to improve the quality and usability of the data generated.
Large datasets are often generated (e.g., many dozens of images in the case of hyperspectral imaging). To address this, new AI solutions should be developed to generate categorised or pre-analysed data, enabling the selection and/or identification of specific elements, images or regions of interest that exhibit important differences for subsequent analysis and validation by the human expert.

Call Total Budget

€10 00 million

Financing percentage by EU or other bodies / Level of Subsidy or Loan

100%

EU Contribution: between €4.00 and €5.00 million

See further details in the work programme p. 86

Thematic Categories

  • Culture
  • Information and Communication Technologies
  • Natural and Cultural Heritage
  • Research, Technological Development and Innovation

Eligibility for Participation

  • Natual person / Citizen / Individual
  • NGOs
  • Non Profit Organisations
  • Other Beneficiaries
  • Private Bodies
  • Researchers/Research Centers/Institutions
  • Semi-governmental organisations
  • State-owned Enterprises

Eligibility For Participation Notes

If projects use satellite-based earth observation, positioning, navigation and/or related timing data and services, beneficiaries must make use of Copernicus and/or Galileo/EGNOS (other data and services may additionally be used).

Beneficiaries will be subject to these additional requirements on outputs: All software developed should be open source, licensed under a CC0 public domain dedication or under an open source licence as recommended by the Free Software Foundation70 and the Open Source Initiative. If the use of open source software components would require disproportional efforts or significantly diminish the quality or performance of the software, proprietary components may be used provided that: an open functional replacement is available; they do not introduce proprietary data formats or Application Programming Interfaces; a full user license free of charge for an unlimited period of time is granted to the consortium responsible for the ECCCH and all its users.

Call Opening Date

10/01/2023

Call Closing Date

21/09/2023

National Contact Point(s)

Research and Innovation Foundation
29a Andrea Michalakopoulou, 1075 Nicosia,
P.B. 23422, 1683 Nicosia
Telephone: +357 22205000
Fax: +357 22205001
Email: support@research.org.cy
Websitehttps://www.research.org.cy/en/

Contact Persons:
Ms Katerina Karakasidou
Scientific Officer
Telephone: +357 22 205 036
Email: kkarakasidou@research.org.cy

Ms Constantina Makri
Scientific Officer
Telephone: +357 22 205 054
Email: cmakri@research.org.cy

(Publish Date: 19/01/2023-for internal use only)

EU Contact Point

Contact the Research Enquiry Service (RES) for any general question on Horizon Europe:

https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/contact-us/research-enquiry-service_en