Towards the integration of spatial data through the Italian Geoportal for Archaeological Resources

Abstract
The present work describes a joint activity carried out by a team from VAST-LAB of PIN, Polo Universitario Città di Prato, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MIBAC) and the recently established Central Institute for Archaeology (ICA), for the development of a National Geoportal for Archaeology with the aim of collecting, making accessible and disseminating knowledge about Italian archaeological heritage. In this perspective, one of the main steps has been the collection of user requirements for the design of the National Geoportal based on the feedback received by a group of domain experts and future users of the portal. An evaluation form was prepared to define the needs of different types of users, the architecture of the portal, its usability and fields of application. The result of this survey enabled us to define the methodology and the formats for the delivery of the archaeological documentation to be produced in future activities by content providers and for already available WebGis, to simplify the publication of data through the geoportal, and to create spatial data interoperability.