Dear Colleagues,

Digital twins, i.e., digital replicas of real world objects, are becoming increasingly important in many research fields, from engineering to environmental and biological applications. They appear as a powerful way of organizing related data, a feature that is highly relevant in an increasingly digital society, and a way of testing, monitoring and experimenting the actual behaviour of the real-world modelled entities.

The present Special Issue aims at analysing how this innovative approach can be applied in the area of cultural heritage. Applications of digital twins on cultural heritage have so far concerned how data can be organized; what kind of services may exploit such data organization to support activities in this domain, such as the study, the communication, the exploitation, and the preservation of cultural heritage. Finally, research has addressed simulation issues based on digital twins, both to analyse possible behaviours and to set up automatic responses based on a bidirectional communication between the simulated world and the real one.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reports of projects—both ongoing and completed—are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following topics as far as research, management, valorisation, and exploitation are concerned:

• Critical reviews of the current state of the art in the subject, considering opportunities, needs and their fulfilment;
• The semantics of digital twins for cultural heritage: standards, ontologies, mappings to other data organisations;
• Applications of digital twins to data spaces in cultural heritage;
• Digital infrastructures in cultural heritage based on digital twins (existing or forthcoming);
• Services for Cultural Heritage research, management and valorisation based on digital twins;
• Simulation of the behaviour of heritage assets based on a digital twin model.

Dr. Franco Niccolucci
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Virtual Worlds is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• digital twin
• digital cultural heritage
• cultural heritage semantics
• cultural heritage digital models