CHT2 Final meeting

A final joint meeting was held  17th January 2018 at USAL of Avila, Spain. Each partner’s commitments were reviewed during this meeting. Examples of 4D products, visualised online through various web-gis platforms, were also presented (https://twiki.fotogrametria.agh.edu.pl/cht2/index.php/ONLINE-VISUALIZATION).  Dissemination activities for exhibition materials were finalised.  Especially for the CHT2 UK case study an exhibition will be performed as part of the Great Exhibition of the North during summer 2018 (https://getnorth2018.com/).

 

Technical guidance “3D Laser Scanning for Heritage” by Historic England

A useful and comprehensive technical guidance document produced by Historic England, provides advice on the use of laser scanning in cultural heritage, archaeology and architecture. It reviews all recent technological advances in laser scanning, integration with other sensors, data acquisition and processing as well as accuracy assessments and validation procedures.

It can be found in:

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/3d-laser-scanning-heritage/

CHT2 UK team meeting

Today a progress meeting for the CHT2 project with representative of Historic England (HE), Paul Bryan, was held at Newcastle University. Jon Mills, Maria V. Peppa and Lesley Davidson from School of Engineering, together with Ian Haynes, Sam Turner and Alex Turner from School of History, Classics and Archaeology were also present.

Up-to-date results of Structure-from-Motion (SfM) with archival imagery over the Hadrian’s Wall study site of Corbridge were presented. Proposed ideas on disseminating the CHT2 project outcomes for the final months were of particular focus during the meeting.

A technical document “Photogrammetric Applications for Cultural Heritage”, which provides guidance on recording cultural heritage with SfM, relevant to the CHT2 project methodology, can be downloaded from the HE website at:
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/photogrammetric-applications-for-cultural-heritage/ .

 

New members in Newcastle

We are pleased to welcome Maria Valasia Peppa and Lesley Davidson in the CHT2 project.

Maria Valasia Peppa has officially started Karolina’s maternity cover this month. Lesley Davidson has also commenced her IAPETUS PhD programme on Hadrian’s Wall, closely related to the project.

http://research.ncl.ac.uk/geospatial/people/phdstudents/mariapeppa.html

Spanish-Italian meeting in Milan

During October a meeting between the Italian and Spanish partners took place at Politecnico di Milano to share experiences and results regarding the completion of their case studies. Several research lines and transfer of technology were discussed, being the critical issues:
(i) different alternatives of image-based modeling and multi-data fusion procedures;
(ii) mesh simplification and optimization to improve the results exportation, either for visualization or analysis purposes, as the stability of the CH asset;
(iii) reverse modeling techniques to give an added value to the final diachronic 3D models, taking into account object’s complexity and non-parametric modeling limitations;
(iv) the current state of advancement of the project deliverables.

New publication available in Geosciences

The Italian partner has published findings on the Milan Roman Circus reconstruction in a special issue of Geosciences journal on “Remote sensing and geosciences for archaeology”. Entitled “Accurate Reconstruction of the Roman Circus in Milan by Georeferencing Heterogeneous Data Sources with GIS”, the paper can be viewed directly in Geosciences.

Spanish thesis success

As part of the CHT2 project development, two research studies where presented in the Higher Polytechnic School of Avila during July 2017.

The researcher Belén Jimenez Fernández-Palacios defended her PhD thesis, entitled “Planning, Surveying, Modelling and Visualization Techniques in the Field of Cultural Heritage”. Her thesis reports investigation of documentation, modeling and visualization of architectural heritage by means of geotechnologies that try to gather three critical factors: (i) automation of processes; (ii) generation of dense 3D models of high geometric and radiometric quality and (iii) the use of low-cost devices. This international thesis includes one scientific contribution related with the CHT2 project. In particular, a methodology for standardizing hybrid approaches and visualizing heterogeneous datasets through virtual web platforms focused on 4D analysis is analysed and proposed.

Moreover, the masters student Angel Guerra Campo also collaborated with the CHT2 project in his master thesis entitled “Modeling of Architectural Cultural Heritage Through Time by Inverse Engineering”. In particular, he performed an analysis of the current remains of the Alcázar of Ávila together with the available historical documentation to implement a 3D reconstruction of three main temporal intervals: (i) actual state, (ii) its use as barracks (XVIII century), and (iii) the original citadel (XVI-XVII century).