Dimensional discoveries: unveiling the potential of 3D heritage point clouds with a robust ontology framework

3D point clouds feature valuable geometric and, often, radiometric and semantic information to support studies, analyses and understanding of the surveyed scene. Due to their generally large size, the use and interpretation of point clouds could be problematic. User-friendly and quick approaches for querying these valuable datasets and retrieving information could surely support end-users, in particular in the heritage sector. This work presents an ontology-based approach to facilitate the query and use of 3D heritage point clouds by means of sets of rules in order to infer properties and characteristics of the surveyed scene. Our approach is focused on linking together 3D spatial data and expert knowledge, in a way that the ontology can elaborate, represent, enrich and query a given point cloud. Results show how different queries can be set-up and how the procedure can be replicated to various queries and datasets.