Historic Survey Ontology (HSV)
language en

Historic Survey Ontology (HSV)

Latest version:
https://w3id.org/hsv#
Revision:
1.0.0
Authors:
Maria Laura Leonardi
Stefano Cursi
Letizia Martinelli
Elena Gigliarelli
Filippo Calcerano
Miguel Azenha
Daniel V. Oliveira
Michele Calvano
Download serialization:
JSON-LD RDF/XML N-Triples TTL
License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Visualization:
Visualize with WebVowl
Cite as:
Maria Laura Leonardi, Stefano Cursi, Letizia Martinelli, Elena Gigliarelli, Filippo Calcerano, Miguel Azenha, Daniel V. Oliveira, Michele Calvano. Historic Survey Ontology (HSV). Revision: 1.0.0.
Ontology Specification Draft
The Historic Survey Ontology (HSV) provides a formal knowledge representation for the activities, outputs, and actors involved in the survey of historic buildings and urban heritage. The ontology models the heterogeneous sources produced during survey campaigns — including point clouds, drawings, photographs, publications, and Building Information Models — and links them explicitly to the spatial and structural entities they document, from geographic regions down to individual structural units and facades. HSV also captures the human roles involved in survey workflows (inspectors, post-processers, and authors) and formalises contextual knowledge about traditional construction techniques and seismic zonation associated with historic contexts. By making provenance, spatial organisation, and construction culture explicit and machine-readable, HSV supports interoperability across heritage documentation practices and facilitates integration with external domain ontologies.
The documentation and systematic knowledge of historic buildings requires the integration of heterogeneous data sources, diverse professional roles, and multi-scale spatial information. Survey campaigns of heritage assets typically produce a wide range of outputs — from raw three-dimensional measurement data to scholarly publications — yet the relationships between these outputs, the entities they describe, and the people responsible for them are rarely formalised in a structured and reusable way. The Historic Survey Ontology (HSV) addresses this gap by providing a shared conceptual framework for representing survey knowledge in the domain of built heritage. The ontology is organised around two main axes. The first concerns the spatial and structural organisation of heritage contexts: HSV introduces a hierarchy of classes — Region, Historic Centre, Aggregate, Structural Unit, and Facade — that reflects the nested scales at which historic buildings and urban fabrics are typically documented. The second concerns the survey outputs themselves: HSV models documents as a central node linking heterogeneous resources (point clouds, drawings, photos, publications, and BIM models) to the entities they characterise and to the actors involved in their production. HSV also captures broader contextual knowledge relevant to heritage interpretation, including traditional construction techniques and seismic zonation, which can be associated with regions or historic centres to enrich the description of the surveyed asset. The ontology reuses the FOAF vocabulary for the representation of persons and their roles, and is designed to align with and complement other domain ontologies used in the heritage and built environment communities. HSV is published at https://w3id.org/hsv and is available in Turtle serialisation under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.

Historic Survey Ontology (HSV): Overview back to ToC

This ontology has the following classes and properties.

Classes

Object Properties

Historic Survey Ontology (HSV): Description back to ToC

The Historic Survey Ontology (HSV) organises the knowledge involved in historic survey activities by explicitly modelling both the information sources and actors directly or indirectly involved in the survey.

Cross-reference for Historic Survey Ontology (HSV) classes, object properties and data properties back to ToC

This section provides details for each class and property defined by Historic Survey Ontology (HSV).

Classes

Aggregatec back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Aggregate

A building aggregate typical of historic urban fabrics, composed of one or more structural units.
is in domain of
contains op, has document op
is in range of
contains op

Authorc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Author

A person who authored a document or publication related to the survey.
has super-classes
Person c
is in range of
has author op

Building Information Modelc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#BuildingInformationModel

A digital model representing the physical and functional characteristics of a heritage asset (BIM).
has super-classes
Document c

Documentc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Document

A central class representing any survey output or information source associated with a heritage asset or its components.
has sub-classes
Building Information Model c, Drawing c, Photo c, Point Cloud c, Publication c
is in domain of
acquired by op, has author op, has inspector op, has post-processer op, post-processed by op
is in range of
has document op

Drawingc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Drawing

A graphical representation such as a plan, section, or elevation produced during a survey.
has super-classes
Document c

Facadec back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Facade

The exterior face of a structural unit or building, treated as a distinct survey entity.
is in domain of
has document op

Historic Centrec back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#HistoricCentre

A historic urban centre, typically nested within a region, that may contain one or more building aggregates.
is in domain of
contains op, has document op, has seismic zone op, has traditional construction technique op
is in range of
contains op

Inspectorc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Inspector

A person responsible for acquiring survey data in the field.
has super-classes
Person c
is in range of
acquired by op, has inspector op

Photoc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Photo

A photographic record of a heritage asset or its components acquired during survey activities.
has super-classes
Document c

Point Cloudc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#PointCloud

A set of data points in 3D space acquired through laser scanning or photogrammetry.
has super-classes
Document c

Post-Processerc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#PostProcesser

A person responsible for the post-processing of raw survey data into usable outputs.
has super-classes
Person c
is in range of
has post-processer op, post-processed by op

Publicationc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Publication

A scholarly or technical text documenting survey findings, research, or heritage knowledge.
has super-classes
Document c

Regionc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#Region

A geographic or administrative region that may contain one or more historic centres.
is in domain of
contains op, has document op, has seismic zone op, has traditional construction technique op

Seismic Zonec back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#SeismicZone

A zone characterised by a specific seismic hazard level, associated with a region or historic centre.
is in range of
has seismic zone op

Structural Unitc back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#StructuralUnit

A building-scale structural entity representing an individual unit within an aggregate.
is in domain of
has document op
is in range of
contains op

Traditional Construction Techniquec back to ToC or Class ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#TraditionalConstructionTechnique

A construction technique or masonry system historically used in a region or historic centre.
is in range of
has traditional construction technique op

Object Properties

acquired byop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#acquiredBy

Links a survey resource to the inspector who acquired it.
has sub-properties
has inspector op
has domain
Document c
has range
Inspector c

containsop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#contains

A generic spatial containment property linking a larger spatial entity to a smaller one nested within it.
has domain
Aggregate c or Historic Centre c or Region c
has range
Aggregate c or Historic Centre c or Structural Unit c
is inverse of
is contained by op

has authorop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#hasAuthor

Links a document or publication to its author.
has domain
Document c
has range
Author c

has documentop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#hasDocument

Links a spatial, structural, or material entity to a document that provides evidence for its characterisation.
has domain
Aggregate c or Facade c or Historic Centre c or Region c or Structural Unit c
has range
Document c
is inverse of
is document of op

has inspectorop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#hasInspector

Associates a survey resource with the inspector responsible for its field acquisition.
has super-properties
acquired by op
has domain
Document c
has range
Inspector c

has post-processerop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#hasPostProcesser

Associates a survey resource with the post-processer responsible for its elaboration.
has super-properties
post-processed by op
has domain
Document c
has range
Post-Processer c

has seismic zoneop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#hasSeismicZone

Associates a region or historic centre with its seismic zone classification.
has domain
Historic Centre c or Region c
has range
Seismic Zone c

has traditional construction techniqueop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#hasTraditionalConstructionTechnique

Associates a region or historic centre with a traditional construction technique typical of that context.
has domain
Historic Centre c or Region c
has range
Traditional Construction Technique c

is contained byop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#isContainedBy

Inverse of hsv:contains.
is inverse of
contains op

is document ofop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#isDocumentOf

Inverse of hsv:hasDocument.
is inverse of
has document op

post-processed byop back to ToC or Object Property ToC

IRI: https://w3id.org/hsv#postProcessedBy

Links a survey resource to the person who post-processed it.
has sub-properties
has post-processer op
has domain
Document c
has range
Post-Processer c

Legend back to ToC

c: Classes
op: Object Properties
Cursi, S., Martinelli, L., Gigliarelli, E., Calcerano, F., Leonardi, M. L., Azenha, M., Oliveira, D. V., & Calvano, M. (2025). Leveraging linked data for enhanced knowledge representation in historical centers safety assessment: insights from Castelnuovo di Porto, Rome. Archeologia e Calcolatori, Supplemento 13, 217–231. https://doi.org/10.19282/acs.13.2025.16

Acknowledgments back to ToC

The authors would like to thank Silvio Peroni for developing LODE, a Live OWL Documentation Environment, which is used for representing the Cross Referencing Section of this document and Daniel Garijo for developing Widoco, the program used to create the template used in this documentation.