A General Web-based Framework for Spatio-Temporal Exploration and Visualization applied to a Case Study on Cultural Heritage Data

The ability of representing spatio-temporal features plays a crucial role in Cultural Heritage field. Management of thematic contexts, of time domain with qualitative and imprecise references, hierarchical structure of time and spatial and temporal multiple granularities are very important feature in this environment for users aiming at discovering knowledge process. In this paper a framework to manage spatio-temporal cultural heritage data exploration and visualization is presented. This framework allows to develop web applications able to handle spatio-temporal objects, regardless of the specific descriptive nature of data, and relies on a flexible architecture for web applications that shows low coupling among tiers and uses standard files and protocols, like WFS, GML, KML, becoming independent from storage and visualization tools. The Visualization layer is designed to offer spatio-temporal views with a high level of personalization: users can choose different kinds of views and visual metaphors to compare objects on the geobrowser by activating or disabling layers of their interest. A new method aiming at visualizing and exploring the hierarchical and stratified time domain is presented. The user interface is open and extendable to new methods of visualization. Finally, a specific web application, based on the described framework, is shown. Keywords: : Spatio-Temporal Model, Spatio-Temporal Visualization, Temporal Exploration, Cultural Heritage.