Round Table
CALL for SHORT PAPERS

Chairs: Victor Manuel LOPEZ-MENCHERO BENICHO | Herbert D. G. MASCHNER, USA

Digital cultural heritage requires a two-part approach. First, the accurate and scientifically valid documentation of cultural heritage monuments and artifacts requires an integration of geospatial techniques, visualization, virtualization, and computer modeling with archaeology, art, and architecture. This necessitates both broad and specialized training of practitioners and creates, by default, a multi-disciplinary approach. Second, making these data useful, and making data and results available to the public is essential. This requires access to long-term digital storage and curation, easily managed databases, and the support of local and regional administrations. The public owns its cultural heritage. Public funding sponsors our work and we owe our citizens access to the results of their taxation.

Over the last three years more than 70 sites, monuments, buildings, and museums have been digitally documented in Spain, France, and Italy by members of the Global Digital Heritage team. Using terrestrial and UAV photogrammetry, high resolution laser scanners, and airborne LiDAR, we have collected over 40 terabytes of data and produced an extensive suite of outputs. Spanning the Paleolithic to the 19th Century, and including everything from Roman dams to fortifications, churches, public plazas, caves, rock art, museums, and bull rings, this project includes nearly every type of data and acquisition technique required for the modern documentation of cultural heritage. This round-table presentation and discussion will highlight the successes of recent work documenting cultural heritage and our efforts to make the data scientifically useful and publically available.

Target group: Archaeologists, architects, historians, geospatial analysts, 3D modelers.

Specifics: This will round-table to highlight the methods, techniques, and politics associated with creating a global digital heritage. We anticipate up to 12 short presentations and extensive discussion.