3d Research Challenges In Cultural Heritage

This open access book presents a collection of papers focusing on current 3D research challenges in the domain of digital cultural heritage. 3D technologies find considerable use within the field of cultural heritage at the beginning of the 21st century, for example in the areas of data acquisition, modeling, archiving in local repositories, harvesting in digital libraries and their long-term preservation. This volume put emphasis on a number of challenges facing 3D research in the 2D/3D digitization of tangible objects and their transformation to digital/virtual/memory twins; the interplay of geometry, semantics and the recovery and management of knowledge in digital cultural heritage; the handling of 3D data via the Cloud on the Internet and mobile devices; the presentation of cultural heritage content in 3D to the general public; and the 3D reproduction of cultural heritage objects from virtual to real.

This book reflects a current state of the art and future perspectives of Digital Heritage focusing on not interpretative reconstruction and including as well as bridging practical and theoretical perspectives, strategies and approaches. Comprehensive key challenges are related to knowledge transfer and management as well as data handling within a interpretative digital reconstruction of Cultural Heritage including aspects of digital object creation, sustainability, accessibility, documentation, presentation, preservation and more general scientific compatibility. The three parts of the book provide an overview of a scope of usage scenarios, a current state of infrastructures as digital libraries, information repositories for an interpretative reconstruction of Cultural Heritage; highlight strategies, practices and principles currently used to ensure compatibility, reusability and sustainability of data objects and related knowledge within a 3D reconstruction work process on a day to day work basis; and show innovative concepts for the exchange, publishing and management of 3D objects and for inherit knowledge about data, workflows and semantic structures.

This book contains selected contributions from some of the most renowned researchers in the field of Digital Heritage and 3D representation of the Past, based in large part on invited presentations from the workshop “Computational Geometry and Ontologies for Cultural Heritage 3D Digital Libraries: What are the future alternatives for Europeana?” which was held in conjunction with the International Conference on Cultural Heritage EuroMed2012 (www.euromed2012.eu) on the island of Cyprus in October 2012. This was the official event of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union on Progress in Cultural Heritage Preservation. The aim of this book is to provide an insight to ongoing research and future directions in this novel, continuously very promising and multi-disciplinary evolving field, which lies at the intersection of digital heritage, engineering, computer science, mathematics, material science, architecture, civil engineering and archaeology.

Cultural heritage communities of interest have increasingly expanded from cultural heritage professionals to volunteers, special interest groups and independent citizen-led initiative groups. Digital technology has also increasingly impacted cultural heritage by affording novel experiences of it – it features in a number of activities for all the aforementioned groups, as well as acting as support for visitors to cultural heritage centres. With different degrees of formality and training, these communities are increasingly defining and taking ownership of what is of value to them, thus reconfiguring the care, communication, interpretation and validation of heritage. Digital technology has played a crucial role in this transformative process. In a fully international context, cultural heritage practitioners, community champions and academics from different fields of study have contributed to this book. Each chapter brings to the fore the multiple relationships between heritage, communities and technologies as a focus of study and reflection in an inclusive way. Contributions touch upon present and future opportunities for technology, as well as participatory design processes with different stakeholders. This book brings together ideas from different disciplines, cultures, methods and goals, to inspire scholars and practitioners involved in community heritage projects.

This book examines how computer-based programs can be used to acquire ‘big’ digital cultural heritage data, curate, and disseminate it over the Internet and in 3D visualization platforms with the ultimate goal of creating long-lasting “digital heritage repositories.’ The organization of the book reflects the essence of new technologies applied to cultural heritage and archaeology. Each of these stages bring their own challenges and considerations that need to be dealt with. The authors in each section present case studies and overviews of how each of these aspects might be dealt with. While technology is rapidly changing, the principles laid out in these chapters should serve as a guide for many years to come. The influence of the digital world on archaeology and cultural heritage will continue to shape these disciplines as advances in these technologies facilitate new lines of research. serif">The book is divided into three sections covering acquisition, curation, and dissemination (the major life cycles of cultural heritage data). Acquisition is one of the fundamental challenges for practitioners in heritage and archaeology, and the chapters in this section provide a template that highlights the principles for present and future work that will provide sustainable models for digital documentation. Following acquisition, the next section highlights how equally important curation is as the future of digital documentation depends on it. Preservation of digital data requires preservation that can guarantee a future for generations to come. The final section focuses on dissemination as it is what pushes the data beyond the shelves of storage and allows the public to experience the past through these new technologies, but also opens new lines of investigation by giving access to these data to researchers around the globe. Digital technology promises significant changes in how we approach social sciences, cultural heritage, and archaeology. However, researchers must consider not only the acquisition and curation, but also the dissemination of these data to their colleagues and the public. Throughout the book, many of the authors have highlighted the usefulness of Structure from Motion (SfM) work for cultural heritage documentation; others the utility and excitement of crowdsourcing as a ‘citizen scientist’ tool to engage not only trained students and researchers, but also the public in the cyber-archaeology endeavor. Both innovative tools facilitate the curation of digital cultural heritage and its dissemination. Together with all the chapters in this volume, the authors will help archaeologists, researchers interested in the digital humanities and scholars who focus on digital cultural heritage to assess where the field is and where it is going.

Virtual heritage has been explained as virtual reality applied to cultural heritage, but this definition only scratches the surface of the fascinating applications, tools and challenges of this fast-changing interdisciplinary field. This book provides an accessible but concise edited coverage of the main topics, tools and issues in virtual heritage. Leading international scholars have provided chapters to explain current issues in accuracy and precision; challenges in adopting advanced animation techniques; shows how archaeological learning can be developed in Minecraft; they propose mixed reality is conceptual rather than just technical; they explore how useful Linked Open Data can be for art history; explain how accessible photogrammetry can be but also ethical and practical issues for applying at scale; provide insight into how to provide interaction in museums involving the wider public; and describe issues in evaluating virtual heritage projects not often addressed even in scholarly papers. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars in museum studies, digital archaeology, heritage studies, architectural history and modelling, virtual environments.

What are the leading tools and archives in digital cultural heritage? How can they be integrated into research infrastructures to better serve their intended audiences? In this book, authors from a wide range of countries, representing some of the best research projects in digital humanities related to cultural heritage, discuss their latest findings, both in terms of new tools and archives, and how they are used (or not used) by both specialists and by the general public.

Computer-Generated Images (CGIs) are widely used and accepted in the world of entertainment but the use of the very same visualization techniques in academic research in the Arts and Humanities remains controversial. The techniques and conceptual perspectives on heritage visualization are a subject of an ongoing interdisciplinary debate. By demonstrating scholarly excellence and best technical practice in this area, this volume is concerned with the challenge of providing intellectual transparency and accountability in visualization-based historical research. Addressing a range of cognitive and technological challenges, the authors make a strong case for a wider recognition of three-dimensional visualization as a constructive, intellectual process and valid methodology for historical research and its communication. Intellectual transparency of visualization-based research, the pervading theme of this volume, is addressed from different perspectives reflecting the theory and practice of respective disciplines. The contributors - archaeologists, cultural historians, computer scientists and ICT practitioners - emphasize the importance of reliable tools, in particular documenting the process of interpretation of historical material and hypotheses that arise in the course of research. The discussion of this issue refers to all aspects of the intellectual content of visualization and is centred around the concept of 'paradata'. Paradata document interpretative processes so that a degree of reliability of visualization outcomes can be understood. The disadvantages of not providing this kind of intellectual transparency in the communication of historical content may result in visual products that only convey a small percentage of the knowledge that they embody, thus making research findings not susceptible to peer review and rendering them closed to further discussion. It is argued, therefore, that paradata should be recorded alongside more tangible outcomes of research, preferably as an integral part of virtual models, and sustained beyond the life-span of the technology that underpins visualization.