EUreka3D: A Digital Hub for Europe’s Cultural Heritage
EUreka3D stands for European Union’s REKonstructed content in 3D, a project co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union.
EUreka3D addresses the needs of the Cultural Heritage (CH) sector to run its digital transformation. Many Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHI), particularly smaller institutions, face challenges in their digital transformation journeys. These challenges include modernising internal processes, enhancing digital asset reusability, retraining staff, upgrading infrastructure, and developing innovative methods for documenting digital cultural objects.
The digital transformation of the CH sector necessitates a shift towards a unified, cloud-based IT infrastructure that transcends institutional boundaries and emphasises interconnected services and interoperability. The project has established the EUreka3D DataHub, a digital service centre offering CH institutions a virtual platform to access knowledge, storage, and computing resources for managing their 3D assets. By integrating EGI services for research, such as EGI Check-in, EGI DataHub and cloud computing, the platform ensures seamless workflows that simplify the creation, management, archiving, preservation, and sharing of digitised objects, particularly 3D records. To counter the perceived hurdles in 3D digitisation, EUreka3D has implemented an onboarding initiative to provide comprehensive support, advanced ICT services, 3D digitisation expertise, and innovative user engagement services to CH institutions of all sizes.
Zooming into the EUreka3D DataHub Platform
The EUreka3D platform implements the services and DataHub offered to CHI and end users. The workflow foresees several stages. The first is “Capture”, where the physical object is digitised with the help of special equipment (cameras, sensors, laser scans, etc). The results of this process are classified as:
- File Data: Raw digital files (the output of the digitisation process, including the processed 3D models, 2D data such as textures, video, audio, and text)
- Metadata: Descriptive information about the object
- Paradata: Information about the digitisation process itself
Once these data categories are collected, they are moved to the EUreka3D DataHub, which has three main components:
- Authorisation and Authentication deal with the security mechanisms to protect 3D objects and other data assets from manipulation and unauthorised access. This service is based on EGI Check-in and is instrumental in managing the EUreka3D Community.
- Data Management stores, organises, shares and publishes data, and is based on the EGI DataHub service and managed by the EGI Federation Member CYFRONET.
- Compute power, which supports the visualisation of 3D models. EUreka3D is supported by cloud-based virtual servers provided by the Federation of the EGI Cloud Compute, whose primary use is to execute code that provides the basic 3D viewer for the visualisation of 3D objects.
Once the data is in EUreka3D’s DataHub, it is ready for the final stage of the EUreka3D workflow: the “Delivery” phase with two main delivery options:
- The Europeana Portal, a user-friendly interface for discovering digital cultural heritage;
- Data Direct Download, for researchers and professionals to access and manipulate data locally.
EUreka3D DataHub uses B2HANDLE to identify data persistently.
By simplifying 3D digitisation and promoting data sharing, EUreka3D is paving the way for a more accessible and interconnected cultural heritage landscape. This initiative ensures that cultural heritage is preserved for future generations and celebrated by people around the world.
The EUreka3D DataHub Platform will be presented during the Europeana Project Week "Heritage Horizons", on 26 November 2024, during the session "3D". Registration is required, but online participation is free.
