Towards a FAIR Ontology Pattern for Describing Heritage Risk Assessment Activities

In recent decades, the role of cultural heritage in disaster risk management has been increasingly recognized. However, it is challenging to put in place adequate risk management strategies against possible threats to heritage institutions and the artifacts they work to preserve, manage, and share with both academia and the general public. Challenges include methodological divergences between different communities of experts, an inadequate knowledge of the assets and the inability to evaluate their worth from a non-market perspective, a severe lack of knowledge sharing, a lack of communication between different disciplines involved in heritage risk assessment, and a lack of engagement with local stakeholders. The Heritage Risk Assessment Ontology (HeRO) was developed and re-engineered to standardize risk assessment procedures and manage complex heritage risk data in a FAIR-compliant format. In this contribution, its effectiveness is demonstrated by illustrating its re-engineered structure and an example scenario involving digital preservation. Future work involves increasing its descriptive capabilities and developing a more effective typification mechanism by expanding and aligning existing vocabularies.