DigitalHeritage2013

ON THE VERGE OF 3D MASS DIGITIZATION IN THE CULTURAL HERITAGE DOMAIN

In 2003 an earthquake of magnitude 6.6 destroyed the historic city of Bam in Iran, well-known for its numerous adobe buildings dating back to the Safavids in the 16th - 18th century. In 2004, about 50,000 books of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, were destroyed when the roof of the main building caught fire. In 2009, the Historical Archive of Cologne. Germany, collapses and buries 90% of its documents – causing restoration efforts to take up to 30 years. In 2012, insurgents destroy the Mausoleum Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar and various tombs in Timbuktu, Mali, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Only when such disasters strike, does the plea for digitization of cultural heritage artifacts audibly increase. Yet, cultural institutions are finding it more and more difficult to cope with the sheer size of their ever-growing collections and seek ways to simplify and automate classification and archival storage. Ten years ago initiatives to mass digitize 2D documents such as books, photos, paintings and other works of art laid the foundation for a worldwide market worth hundred Millions of Euro for service providers and hardware manufacturers. Now, the time has come to expand those services into the third dimension. Along with this expansion further challenges arise, such as long-term data storage of millions of virtual 3D models, appropriate 3D formats, a general and legally binding definition of digital rights on 3D reconstructed content and strategies to certify a virtual artifact’s provenance.

To face the increasing demand for 3D mass digitization in the cultural heritage domain, we need technologies focusing on industrialization and automation of the whole 3D digitization process. We need approaches that embed the latest generation of sea, land or airborne, autonomous robots to serve as mobile platforms for digital scanning and reconstruction technologies in their processing pipelines. We need conveyor-belt solutions for small and medium size artifacts. We need full control of environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity and lighting to ensure comparable results. Furthermore, it is essential to provide fully automated end-to-end solutions which can connect to automated vaults or high-rack warehouses of all sorts. In conclusion, we need to develop comprehensive, simple-to-use, fast and economic approaches to mass 3D digitization, classification, annotation and archival storage at best possible quality.