Dealing with the Data Avalanche

CISA3 is creating a cyber-enabled approach to the documentation of cultural heritage and cultural world heritage at large. This so-called Cyber-Archaeology is focused on developing the technologies needed to "create a future for the past". More specifically, we are developing a data-driven environment that supports the development of new methodologies for the characterization of artifacts and their state of health in a reliable, accurate and complete form. A central component of Cyber-Archaeology is an integrative visual analytics strategy for the collaborative analysis of multispectral data spanning the broad scales of time (temporal) and space (spatial), while harnessing a globally distributed and curated data repository. Providing an environment for the critical and systematic archiving of information and health assessment strategies for paintings, prints, photographs, manuscripts, rare books, maps, sculptures, historic structures, and other objects of cultural heritage, paired with visual analytics techniques and underlying cyber-infrastructure. The combination can then guide the knowledge-discovery process and unlock the underlying meaning of an artifact, while determining if the artifact needs to be monitored or requires any type of intervention. These tools can also be used to determine future needs for intervention based on predicted rates of decay if intervention is not taken.