The UAS-Based 3D Image Characterization of Mozarabic Church Ruins in Bobastro (Malaga), Spain

Abstract

In recent years, the application of geomatics tools in archaeology has proved to be very useful to obtain meaningful knowledge of the 3D reconstruction of archaeological remains and semantic classification of the 3D surface. These techniques have proven to be an effective solution for the 3D modeling and the extraction of many spatial features on an archaeological site. However, novel methodologies as well as new data exploitation strategies are required to exploit these geospatial data for natural and cultural heritage documentation, monitoring, and preservation. In this paper, we have studied unique archaeological ruins, a Mozarab church in Al-Andalus, using high-resolution RGB images, which was taken by a drone. Thus, a 3D reconstruction of the ruins and the surrounding environment is carried out in order to characterize it on a dense point cloud. Then, a digital elevation model (DEM) was calculated in order to identify critical slope lines, which are significant to determine where the structure of the church was built. Our results can be used for the development of an architectural project and thus a virtual recreation of these archaeological ruins was performed.

A Low-Cost, Easy-Way Workflow for Multi-Scale Archaeological Features Detection Combining LiDAR and Aerial Orthophotography

“…An aerial orthophotograph was obtained with the structure from motion (SfM) technique [34] using a DJI brand Phantom IV pro model multirotor quadcopter equipped with a camera with a 1/2.3 CMOS sensor and an electronic shutter that provides an effective resolution of 12.4 M (Table 3). To carry out this orthophotography, the survey was planned as a photogrammetric flight following parallel lines.…”

“…For the processing, the procedure shown in Figure 3 was followed [34]. Thanks to this process, we were able to obtain both the aforementioned orthophotography and the DEM, as well as to carry out the analysis described below.…”

Trends, benefits, and barriers of unmanned aerial systems in the construction industry: a survey study in the United States

“…AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) industry has also incrementally adopted UAS technology (Albeaino et al 2019). UASs have been used in a variety of AEC applications from traffic surveillance (Barmpounakis and Geroliminis 2020; Hart and Gharaibeh 2011) and landslide monitoring (Niethammer et al 2012;Yeh and Chuang 2020), to cultural heritage conservation (Enríquez et al 2020;Koutsoudis et al 2014;Uysal et al 2013) and city planning (Banaszek et al 2017;Bulatov et al 2011). Construction, in particular, witnessed an exponential growth in UAS applications, the implementation of which stems from the benefits associated with their capability to access unreachable or unsafe areas, and their ability to perform tasks safely and time-efficiently (Gheisari and Esmaeili 2019;Zhou and Gheisari 2018).…”

Suitability of Aerial Photogrammetry for Dump Documentation and Volume Determination in Large Areas

“…In recent years, digital aerial cameras and appropriate software development have provided sensors with higher resolution, allowing the Earth's surface to be captured with detail-level improvement at the same flight height, respectively reducing the necessary number of images and thus flight time and cost of imaging [23]. The minimizing of fieldwork time, rapidity of photogrammetric data collection and processing, and high detail and accuracy of the terrain models generated by modern software currently take aerial photogrammetry forward as an exciting alternative in terms of quality and efficiency in comparison with terrestrial geodetic methods [24].…”