Decipher - National support

cultural heritage, semantic web, knowledge extraction, reasoning

Digital heritage and semantic web technologies hold out the promise of nearly unlimited access to cultural knowledge. The problem is that cultural meaning does not reside in individual objects but in the patterns of knowledge and events, belief and thought that link them to each other and to the observer. This is why story is so important to the communication of, and meaningful understanding of culture.

DECIPHER is developing new solutions to the whole range of narrative construction, knowledge visualisation and display problems. It will change the way people access digital heritage by combining much richer, event-based metadata with causal reasoning models. This will result in a reasoning engine, virtual environment and interfaces that can help curators and visitors to present digital heritage objects as part of a coherent narrative that is directly related to the user’s interests. This will allow the user to interactively assemble, visualise and explore, not just collections of objects, but the knowledge structures that connect and give them meaning.

The partners bring together great skills and experience in the technical fields required by the project, with the authorial and curatorial authority of national institutions, the innovative impetus of a technology-based SME, and the drive to market of a large company that combines heritage and media interests.