First Call Awards

Awarded Projects from the First Call – Data

1. FinFair

Full Title: Finno-Ugric Dataspace: interconnecting the tangible and intangible heritage of regional identity groups under the framework of ECCCH
Lead partner: Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia
Other participants: Reprex. B.V.
Starting date: 1 March 2026
End date: 28 February 2027

FinFAIR develops a lightweight, scalable workflow that enables small museums, archives, and community collectors to create high-quality Heritage Digital Twins—interoperable digital representations linking tangible and intangible heritage within the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH).

The project addresses a core barrier to participation: many institutions hold unique collections but lack the technical capacity to contribute structured, reusable data. FinFAIR demonstrates that with the Heritage Digital Twin Ontology (HDTO) and open tools such as Wikibase, even small organisations can produce Cloud-ready data aligned with FAIR and CARE principles. Three use cases test scalability: a Livonian corpus enabling a 360° micro-scale reconstruction of heritage; a larger Latgalian corpus with lower initial metadata depth; and a Baltic–Nordic corpus linking dispersed Finno-Ugric materials across borders.

By combining community-based curation with rigorous semantic modelling, FinFAIR delivers a reproducible method for integrating fragmented collections into a shared dataspace. The growing collection is openly accessible at finnougric.net, with ongoing updates documented at finnougric.substack.com. The resulting digital twins are not only interoperable but legally reusable, supporting future research, digital storytelling, and AI-driven applications within the Cloud.

2. Moher

Full Title: Mosaic Heritage: An AI-Powered Interdisciplinary Database of Czech Mosaic Artworks
Lead partner: University of Pardubice
Other participants: –
Starting date: 1-4-2026
End date: 31-3-2027

Mosaic Heritage (MOHER) is an interdisciplinary initiative focused on creating the first comprehensive, open-access digital database of mosaic artworks in the Czech Republic. Fully aligned with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCHC), the project integrates art-historical, conservation, and material-science perspectives into a unified digital platform.

MOHER responds to the urgent need to structure and preserve mosaic data by transforming scattered records into a FAIR-compliant, semantically rich resource. The platform will host high-resolution imagery, geospatial metadata, and detailed material analyses alongside restoration records.
Integrated AI tools will enable advanced interaction through semantic and visual search, automatic clustering by style or material, and metadata enrichment, supporting both academic research and public engagement. Designed as a model for interoperable digital heritage systems, the database aligns with the ECHOES Conceptual Model, ensuring long-term usability within the ECCHC ecosystem.

MOHER significantly contributes to European heritage research by providing a structured dataset covering Central European mosaic production since the 19th century. By combining traditional expertise with innovative technology, the project safeguards cultural memory and advances digital heritage practices across domains.

3. LandArchIE

Full Title: FAIR and AI-Ready Landscape Archaeology Data for Ireland
Lead partner: The Discovery Programme: Centre for Archaeology and Innovation Ireland
Other participants: Bias Variance Labs, d.o.o. (Slovenia), Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Slovenia)
Starting date: 1-4-2026
End date: 31-3-2027

LandArchIE (FAIR and AI‑Ready Landscape Archaeology Data for Ireland) is creating the first large, consistent digital dataset for studying Ireland’s prehistoric and early medieval earthwork monuments, including ringforts, barrows, and enclosures at national scale. The project brings together two powerful sources of information: high‑resolution LiDAR (laser scanning that reveals subtle shapes in the landscape) and satellite imagery from Sentinel‑1 and Sentinel‑2.

By combining these, LandArchIE will produce rich “multi-layer” resources that help computers and researchers detect, map, and interpret archaeological features more efficiently. More than 10,000 verified monument records will be transformed into carefully prepared data packages for machine learning, including raster patches, training labels, and detailed sematic metadata. The outputs will include 0.5 m digital terrain and feature models, seven archaeological visualisations, and a large benchmark dataset of over 400 GB for research and development.

To ensure the data is easy to find, reuse, and link with other heritage resources, LandArchIE will publish metadata using recognised international standards and follow FAIR principles. This work connects archaeology, artificial intelligence, and cultural heritage infrastructure, supporting more open, sustainable, and interoperable digital heritage research.

4. APACH

Full Title: Architectural Preservation and Archaeology for Cultural Heritage
Lead partner: Aix Marseille University
Other participants: –
Starting date: –
End date: –

Building on the TAIC2 project (Amidex, Aix Marseille University, CNRS, https://TAIC.hypotheses.org/) and armed with eight years of archaeological monitoring of the ancient theatre of Orange (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), APACH proposes a strategy aligned with the FAIR principles for the creation and use of digital twins of cultural heritage.

The project is based on an interoperable HBIM (Historic Building Information Modelling) framework, designed to integrate with the European Cultural Heritage Cloud (ECCCH). Building on an existing infrastructure — an HBIM model compliant with the IFC standard (Industry Foundation Classes, ISO 16739), interoperable via a REST web service and OGC geospatial standards — APACH will integrate heterogeneous data from archaeological and architectural studies, currently scattered across repositories with varying access levels.

To facilitate this integration, three innovations will be developed: advanced semantic interoperability between IFC and CIDOC CRM; automated tools for validating and correcting IFC geometries to ensure their reusability; and a collaborative interface enabling the use of the digital twin through co-constructed use cases. The project will result in a reproducible and fully documented methodology, presented in a white paper summarising the use cases. APACH will thus offer monuments already modelled in HBIM direct integration into the ECCCH ecosystem, as soon as interoperable, open formats are choose, without the need for complex data transformation.

5. M2M

Full Title: From Model to Meaning: Enriching Cultural Heritage Through Paradata-Driven 3D Models
Lead partner: Austrian Archaeological Institute (OeAI) / Austrian Academy of Sciences
Other participants: 7Reasons GmbH; Digital Design Unit, TU Darmstadt; Computer Graphics, HTW Dresden; Istanbul Bilgi University
Starting date: –
End date: –

M2M – From Model to Meaning – brings scientifically grounded 3D reconstructions of key monuments from Ephesos into the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH). The project connects the IDOVIR platform for virtual reconstructions with the ECCCH and publishes selected models together with rich metadata and structured paradata documenting the evidence, assumptions, and interpretive choices behind each reconstruction.

In this way, digital reconstructions become transparent, traceable, and citable research resources rather than static visualisations. M2M will prepare ten representative 3D models from Ephesos for long-term preservation, assign persistent identifiers, and make them interoperable through semantic mapping, Linked Open Data exports, and a documented exchange interface.

The project will support archaeologists, museums, educators, and creative industries by making these models reusable for research, teaching, exhibitions, and immersive applications. At the same time, it provides a replicable workflow that other institutions can apply to their own 3D models. By transforming virtual reconstructions into FAIR, semantically linked digital knowledge, M2M strengthens the reuse of high-quality cultural heritage data across Europe.

6. SMARTWAYS

Full Title: Smart Cultural Heritage Resources for Destination Management along Historic Routes
Lead partner: Romea Strata European Association – AERS
Other participants: ARGE Pilgern in Kärnten, Turaida Museum Reserve, GVAM Guias Interactivas SL, European Association of the Via Francigena ways
Starting date: 15 April 2026
End date: 14 April 2027

SMARTWAYS aims to contribute a comprehensive, geolocated dataset of cultural heritage Points of Interest (POIs) along the Romea Strata and Via Francigena—Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe—to the European Common Cultural Heritage Cloud. The primary dataset, developed under rurAllure project, includes over 3000 digitized records with thematic annotations, historical context, media resources, and enriched narratives.

The goal is to make this harmonized, semantically enriched data accessible through the ECCCH, enabling targeted reuse by tourism professionals with the use of AI for delivering tailored experiences, producing new narratives, exploring new storytelling formats. By creating nuanced routes tailored to audience interests, it contributes to transforming the historical routes into dynamic resources for local communities moving beyond conventional mass tourism in overlooked rural/inner territories.

The initiative serves as a proof-of-concept for connecting multimedia narratives and context-aware content delivery to geolocated heritage data. This not only enriches the cultural experience for travelers but also provides a replicable model for other CHIs seeking to publish travel-oriented data, thereby supporting the sustainability of the slow cultural tourism industry. Moreover, the dataset holds significant potential to inform policy studies at various levels, a capability already demonstrated during the rurAllure project, whose policy briefs were a subject of debate even at the European level.

7. MOH

Full Title: Mausoleum of Hadrian: A Legacy from the Past, An Opportunity for the Future.
Lead partner: Pantheon e Castel Sant’Angelo – Direzione Musei nazionali della città di Roma (CSA)
Other participants: Paolo Vitti; Noémie Gabay; Dario Di Girolamo; Universitatea Tehnica Cluj-Napoca
Starting date: 31/3/2026
End date: 31/3/2027

The Castel Sant’Angelo, stands as a remarkable testament to centuries of continuous use, where complex historical stratifications have both concealed and preserved its original Roman architecture, the monumental Mausoleum of the emperor Hadrian. This project presents the latest outcomes of a decade-long research endeavor dedicated to its study.

The research adopts an innovative hybrid methodology that combines advanced digital tools with critical on-site interpretation, positioning documentation as a proactive strategy for knowledge transfer and long-term heritage conservation. The aim is to consolidate years of fieldwork into an integrated and sustainable digital ecosystem, ensuring that complex datasets remain accessible and reusable over time, fostering engagement across multiple levels, from researchers and professionals to site managers and custodians, as well as wider audiences and local communities.

By bringing together a multidisciplinary team specializing in conservation, documentation, data management, and digital technologies, the project establishes a concrete bridge between academic research and site management. In close collaboration with the cultural institution responsible for the monument, it turns research outcomes into shared resources. In doing so, it directly informs decisionmaking, strengthens long-term stewardship, and positions the Mausoleum of Hadrian not only as a legacy of the past, but also as a strategic opportunity for the future.

8. SAVOR

Full Title: Semantic AI Valorisation of Original Recipes
Lead partner: The Folklore Archive of the Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca Branch, Romania
Other participants: Institute for Artificial Intelligence of the Romanian Academy (RACAI) (Romania); Department of Food Science, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, USAMV Cluj-Napoca (Romania); Casa Artusi (Italy);
Starting date: 25-3-2026
End date: 25-3-2027

The SAVOR project creates a bilingual (Romanian–Italian) corpus of approximately 3,300 traditional recipes, purpose-built for AI-driven semantic search and cultural analysis. Designed for digital humanities scholars, culinary historians, educators and NLP researchers, the corpus provides structured, semantically enriched text in open formats (JSON, TXT, CSV, Markdown), featuring multilingual titles, ingredient annotations linked to FoodOn, preparation steps and cultural metadata (region, period, ritual context).

The dataset supports complex semantic queries—such as identifying vegetarian dishes suited to religious fasting periods or comparing cross-cultural culinary patterns—and serves as a multilingual benchmark for AI models in Romanian–Italian recipe retrieval and classification.
By project completion, SAVOR will deliver a validated corpus, a linked-data graph of approximately 180,000 RDF triples, DOI registration on Zenodo and full integration readiness for the Cultural Heritage Cloud.

An open-source AI Starter Kit, annotation guidelines and ingestion manuals will ensure replication and reuse. SAVOR offers a FAIR benchmark dataset and a practical, reproducible model for mid-sized cultural heritage institutions seeking to transform textual collections into interoperable, AI-ready resources—advancing both digital scholarship and public engagement with Europe’s culinary heritage.

9. SPARRK-UA

Full Title: Semantic Provenance for AI-ready Responsible Research of at-risK Ukrainian Artifacts
Lead partner: Web2Learn
Other participants: Odesa National Fine Arts Museum
Starting date: 1-4-2026
End date: 31-3-2027

SPARRK-UA proposes a linked open data structure and datasets for at-risk cultural heritage in museum emergency settings in Ukraine. It aims to document the provenance of forced movements in collections, such as evacuations, custody transfers, and relocations, and to enrich them with related paradata and multilingual grey literature.

The documentation will be deployed in a collaborative knowledge base (Wikibase) that registers IIIF manifests and persistent identifiers as decentralised, low-carbon blockchain anchors. Access is provided via APIs, SPARQL endpoints, and data dumps, including in an open research repository, supporting interoperability and long-term preservation. To ensure responsible research and reuse, applied AI-ethics typologies will be embedded as human- and machine-readable terms of use.

The pilot is centred on Ukrainian heritage preservation at the peripheries, particularly in the conflict-affected southern region and the development of interoperable provenance data for the collaborating museum. As a sustainability and capacity-building measure, a nationwide hackathon will be organised to support additional memory institutions facing disruption in adopting the SPARRK-UA approach. The datasets will be deposit-ready for the ECCCH, delivering AI-ready LOD provenance that demonstrates movement, rendered open, interoperable and governed for digital scholarship and education.

10. Sawubona

Full Title: Sawubona Commons
Lead partner: Wereldmuseum, the Netherlands
Other participants: Plimpton-322 Consultancy
Starting date: 16 March 2026
End date: 16 October 2026

Sawubona is a Zulu greeting: “I see you.” But its real meaning goes deeper. It does not simply acknowledge presence; it acknowledges personhood, history, and dignity. The idea is simple and profound: we become fully present when we are truly seen. This is more than a greeting. It is a philosophy of relationship. To see someone is to recognise their story, their past, their perspective, and their place in the world.

In Sawubona we deliver a platform for objects that were acquired and traded over centuries of colonial rule. A period marred by injustice, oppression and unequal relationships. Colonial heritage is not limited to a small number of countries. A pan-European trade has led to a diaspora of objects scattered across the continent. Many European nations hold objects acquired during a centuries long colonial period, even when they did not directly administer overseas territories. Colonial heritage is a European responsibility.

Sawubona supports the communities of origin to contribute local knowledge, perspectives, and research on the historical events that led to the acquisition of objects. Contributions can be added as annotations, linked to existing records, and traced through transparent provenance.

The project is a cooperation between the National Museum of World Cultures (Wereldmuseum) in the Netherlands and data architecture studio Plimpton-322.

11. RuDIHeritage

Full Title: Ruppendorf Digital – Key to Preserving and Researching Historical Heritage
Lead partner: Municipality Klingenberg, Germany
Other participants: Apus Systems GbR; University of Applied Sciences Dresden (HTW Dresden); SLUB Dresden (Saxon State and University Library Dresden); AG Ortschronik Ruppendorf (volunteer community from the municipality of Klingenberg)
Starting date: –
End date: –

How can a small village preserve its cultural heritage in the digital age? RuDiHeritage offers a practical European example. In Ruppendorf (municipality of Klingenberg, Saxony, Germany), citizens, researchers, public institutions, and technology partners work together to document, digitise, and interpret rural heritage. The consortium unites the Municipality of Klingenberg with its volunteer Local History Working Group, HTW Dresden (geophysics & 3D), SLUB Dresden (metadata & archiving), and Apus Systems (technical implementation).

The project focuses on a rich body of local sources: handwritten chronicles, historical maps, photographs, and the remains of the medieval water castle of Ruppendorf. By combining AI-supported text recognition, geophysical prospection, drone-based 3D documentation, and structured digital archiving, RuDiHeritage makes fragile cultural assets accessible for research, education, and the wider public.

What makes the project distinctive is its participatory and transferable approach. Local knowledge from the volunteer history group meets academic expertise and digital technologies, showing that innovation in cultural heritage is not limited to major cities. RuDiHeritage demonstrates how rural communities can reveal hidden structures, connect fragmented sources, and create sustainable digital access to their past.
In this way, Ruppendorf becomes more than a case study – it becomes a model for how Europe’s smaller places can preserve and share their heritage across generations.

12. BLACKAXES.DH

Full Title: Black axes Digital Heritage
Lead partner: Institute of History and Archaeology, University of Tartu, Estonia
Other participants: Prehistoric Society of Luxembourg / Societe prehistorique luxembourgeoise, S.P.L.
Starting date: 31-3-2026
End date: 31-3-2027

The Sauer river valley in Luxembourg preserves a uniquely rich record of prehistoric surface finds gathered by amateur archaeologists and collected into a dataset by the Societe Prehistorique Luxembourgeoise (SPL). Over decades, the surveys have produced thousands of stone artefacts, yet almost all of this material remains unpublished and scientifically underused. BLACKAXES.DH continues the earlier data work of the project’s PI and the SPL, initiating the structured digitisation and open dissemination of these legacy collections, beginning with the Jos Herr archive from the Diekirch region.

The project will transform thousands of geolocated artefact records and accompanying maps and descriptions into a validated, accessible, and semantically connected dataset that meets the principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. Working jointly with researchers, students, and citizen archaeologists, the project documents and enriches the material to reveal prehistoric land use and raw-material industry patterns. It also prepares the dataset for emerging AI applications that can assist in spatial modelling, artefact recognition and classification.

The resulting digital corpus will be publicly available through interoperable heritage infrastructures, linking Luxembourg’s citizen-sourced archaeological heritage with the emerging European Cultural Heritage Cloud. By opening these archives to research and preservation, BLACKAXES.DH demonstrates how local initiatives and community knowledge can become integral parts of continental-scale cultural heritage ecosystems.