3DCG reconstitution and virtual reality of UNESCO world heritage in danger: the Citadel of Bam

Abstract

This paper provides a report of a research project on virtual revival of the Citadel of Bam, a UNESCO world heritage site in danger that was destroyed in an earthquake in 2003. The simulation of damaged buildings that lies along the primary axes of the citadel and 3-D reconstitution using state-of-the-art 3DCG tools are presented. The key approach to 3-D modeling of the destroyed buildings is complementary usage of heterogeneous data such as 2-D maps, photos, cartography maps, and sketches in collaboration between different teams. As the basic 2-D maps had error, analytic and comparative research is conducted on diverse data resources to create a knowledge-base for the 3DCG restoration of the site. The process of modeling is completed with regard to the complicated and curved mud brick buildings with traditional architectural details. For this purpose proper functions of the tools is selected and in some cases different tools are used. The modeling is done by linking the component with their semantic by a metadata-based layer naming process. The tasks of evaluating the historical, architectural, and technical details of the 3-D buildings are done in parallel with the modeling by a team of CG and architecture experts in order to increase the precision of the 3DCG reconstitution so that it can be used as a reference for the physical restoration. The first trial version of virtual reality demonstration of the main axes of the Citadel of Bam is described. The paper concludes with proposals to enhance the process of simulation and also to open the restricted views of the virtual reconstitution on Internet.

Polymeric coatings for protection of historic monuments: Opportunities and challenges

“…It was made from mud brick containing a very resistant type of clay. An earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale occurred on December 26, 2003 led to the destruction of Citadel of Bam and loss of many human lives 32. It must be emphasized that Persian monuments in Iran such as Choghazanbil temple in Shoosh, Persepolis, Pasargad and Naghshe Rostam in Shiraz, Alighapou, Sepah Salar Mosque, Siosepol (bridge) in Isfahan, and Yazd's grand mosque are required to be conserved immediately by protective materials.…”

Online Ontology-Based Knowledge Representation of Historic Buildings: Publishing an RDF-Based Website

“…The architecture of the ontology can be seen in figure 2. [8]. These quarters were altered, destroyed and restored several times during the complicated historical events of the Citadel.…”

“…Geographic objects are now represented with a point in a spatial coordinate. As a spatial reference system, we used both UTM coordinates, obtained from 3D photogrammetric map (IFCA project between NCC and CNRS) [8], and World Geodetic System 84 (WGS84), obtained by identifying buildings on Google Earth. We realized, however, that WGS84 and UTM coordinates do not represent the same point on earth.…”