Digital Photogrammetry and Laser Scanning in Cultural Heritage Survey

Dear Colleagues,

In the last few years, amidst the crisis resulting from the pandemic situation and the lack of resources caused by conflicts, 3D digital technologies—such as digital photogrammetry and laser scanning—have become an effective solution for keeping cultural heritage virtually accessible to citizens and attracting a new type of tourism in a hitherto unknown context in which mobility has been reduced and which has forced us to change our living and consumption habits.

It is, therefore, undeniable that there is a need to develop new ways of approaching cultural heritage to create applications that promote its resilience and conservation, enable the recovery of historic assets and facilitate their accessibility, and encourage research and sustainability. To this end, the use of laser scanning and digital photogrammetry for documentation and archiving purposes should be fostered. These 3D virtualisation options enable the dissemination of and access to culture, and the data obtained with these techniques will also allow progress to be made in the creation of semantic digital models that facilitate the monitoring and management of historic buildings.

All of this is essential to boost the conservation of cultural heritage and facilitate visiting historic sites and monuments not only when access is suspended or severely restricted due to crisis periods, but also for disabled people in their daily routines. These solutions may also serve to overcome, socially and economically, the consequences of crises and alleviate the depopulation of rural areas by creating new initiatives that allow the permanence of inhabitants.

This Special Issue seeks papers approaching the topic of digitization, documentation, conservation, restoration, visualization, exploitation, and the re-use of cultural heritage from different and interdisciplinary perspectives, including the consideration of different areas of archaeological and heritage knowledge. Emphasis will be placed on novel approaches and technologies that support faster, better and cheaper digitization and the presentation of heritage assets. Articles utilizing remote sensing methods to virtualize excavations, monuments or landscapes and articles improving them through archaeological and heritage research are welcome. Review articles and works on performance evaluation will also be well received.

The broad topics of this Special Issue of Remote Sensing include, but are not limited to: 

• New methods and strategies for 3D surveys;
• Different approaches to 3D modelling;
• Laser scanning/photogrammetry integration;
• The development of structure from motion and dense image-matching algorithms;
• Point cloud management and classification;
• Algorithms and tools for 3D modeling;
• Building semantic and parametric models from 3D point clouds;
• Heritage Building Information Models (HBIM);
• Metrological analysis;
• Structural analysis;
• Tangible and intangible cultural heritage;
• Digitization of cultural heritage assets;
• Semantic analysis and e-documentation;
• 3D and immersive visualization, including virtual, augmented, and mixed reality;
• The preservation and protection of cultural heritage;
• Digital cultural heritage applications and services;
• 3D surveys.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Heritage.

Dr. Pilar Merchán
Dr. Santiago Salamanca
Dr. Emiliano Pérez
Dr. María José Merchán
Guest Editors

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