The state of Qatar is driving an exciting and ambitious new “Smart Nation” initiative for the creation of a smart, modern and future-proof 21st century state with digital preservation of national assets right at its heart. In the light of future representation and management of cultural heritage assets, a number of interesting opportunities and demands arise if we consider the significant progress in the multimedia sector.
The documentation of cultural assets is inherently a multimedia process, addressed through digital representation of the shape, appearance and preservation condition of the Cultural Heritage (CH) object. CH assets are not clone-able physically or impeccably restorable, and hence their curation as well as long-term preservation require the leveraging of advanced 3D modelling technologies. However, this poses serious challenges since the generation of high quality 3D models is still very time-consuming and expensive, not least because the modelling is carried out for individual objects rather than for entire collections. Furthermore, the outcome of digital reconstructions is frequently provided in formats that are not interoperable, and therefore cannot be easily accessed and/or re-used and understood by scholars, curators or those working in cultural heritage industries, thereby resulting in serious risks menacing the sustainability of the reconstructions. Indeed, the digital model is progressively becoming the actual representation of a cultural heritage asset for anybody, anywhere and anytime, and therefore this project intends to acknowledge the changing role that reconstruction, visualisation and management now play in the curation of heritage and its analysis. Three use cases will be presented:
- Use case 1 “Multi-format 3D cultural asset digitalisation”
- User case 2 “User-adaptive 3D cultural asset visualisation”
- User case 3 “On-site digitalisation of culture heritage assets”
These use cases highlight the following key innovation areas that will be brought forward by CEPROQHA:
1. Cost-effective acquisition and 3D modelling: This includes technologies that are easy to use and portable to acquire data at remote sites such as excavations areas. The technology must be independent of the physical dimension of the asset or the place, where it is located.
2. Interoperability and representation of 3D cultural heritage assets: The resulting 3D models must be available in a format that can be converted and re-formatted for any purpose such as different display types or different representation formats like virtual walk-through. Future 3D visualisation techniques are required following the fast development in the media industry. Hence, interactive visualisation of static 3D objects as well as dynamic visual experience by virtual walk through is required.
3. Accessibility and content management: All digitised assets must be accessible anywhere at any time. The content management shall support user annotation, search and retrieval capabilities as well as tools for user-specific data processing and visualisation. Data management should preferably be performed using cloud-based services and storage capabilities.
In the cultural heritage domain, there exist mainly three different types of assets that are relevant for documentation through 3D modelling, i.e. sculptures, reliefs and large-scale historical monuments or sites. Digital representation, management of these assets and immediate access and display are required mainly in two areas. The first is the area of curation, where easy access to Qatari cultural heritage assets will improve the scientific outcome, save time and preserve the original objects. The second area is scholarly, where new educational avenues are approached to improve the quality and attractiveness of Qatari museums. This is mainly achieved by interaction with content and new forms of visual display of cultural heritage objects.
Hence, 3D scanning of CH assets, 3D reconstruction and modelling, storage and finally access, interaction and display of 3D data need to be investigated as a joint process taking into account the interdependencies between all of its components. By looking at the different types of assets, technologies need to be developed that can handle CH assets of different sizes, provide different levels of quality and support a large variety of displays and visualisation methods. CEPROQHA will examine these issues and develop advanced technologies that are able to create, process, reconstruct and display high-quality 3D models of cultural heritage assets in various interoperable formats and representations.