Towards Heritage World Models
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19489802 |
|---|---|
| Authors | George Pavlidis (0000-0002-9909-1584, Athena Research and Innovation Center In Information Communication & Knowledge Technologies), Vasileios Sevetlidis (0000-0001-9348-8786, Athena Research and Innovation Center In Information Communication & Knowledge Technologies), Vasileios Arampatzakis (0000-0003-4320-3740, Athena Research and Innovation Center In Information Communication & Knowledge Technologies) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 233 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-13 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Heritage (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2571-9408 • E-ISSN: 2571-9408 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/heritage9060233 |
| OpenAlex | W7164807624 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
Digital twins have become a central paradigm for cultural heritage documentation, monitoring, and preventive preservation. Yet, when cultural heritage systems promise prediction, simulation, intervention planning, and decision support, a more explicit account is needed of the computational commitments behind such claims. This position paper proposes the notion of the heritage world model as a conceptual and architectural abstraction that uses the semantic digital twin as its representational layer and extends it toward prediction, memory, uncertainty-aware reasoning, and intervention evaluation. We define a heritage world model as a structured, temporally updated, semantically grounded, and action-aware model of a heritage asset and its preservation environment, capable of integrating observations, estimating latent risk states, predicting plausible future trajectories, and evaluating interventions under uncertainty. The paper does not present a validated deployed system. Rather, it clarifies the architectural conditions under which a decision-support digital twin infrastructure could support the kind of world-model-like preservation system proposed here. It further argues that such a model becomes operationally meaningful only when it includes a human-supervised controller layer that maps semantic state, predicted risk trajectories, uncertainty, memory, and institutional constraints into preservation-relevant actions, alerts, monitoring adaptations, or requests for expert review. Sensor data, remote sensing, computational models, risk assessments, policies, and conservation actions are interpreted as possible observational, dynamic, and intervention layers of a heritage world model. The paper reviews adjacent work in heritage digital twins, semantic and reactive ontologies, risk-aware preservation, agentic AI, and modern AI world models, and proposes a research agenda for moving toward predictive, memory-bearing, and intervention-aware preservation intelligence
Abstraction · Conceptual model · Cultural heritage · Cultural heritage management · Industrial heritage · Intervention (counseling) · Position (finance) · Position paper · 3D Surveying and Cultural Heritage · Archaeological Research and Protection · Conservation Techniques and Studies
Uses of Heritage
The Fair Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship
Digital Twin
Reassembling the Social
Multicriteria decision-making to support preventive maintenance of built heritage in the historic center of Sobral, Brazil
The value of agent-based modelling for assessing tourism–environment interactions in the Anthropocene
Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation
| Highly cited | No |
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