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Geoinformatics_03-2009
article faro photo laser scan of the 17th century robarte monument, once part of the earlier medieval church now incorporated into the wing of truro cathedral. of handling data (optical and quantum processors immediately spring to mind in the current technological climate). in fact the current technological climate is such that capture and access to information are available now at a rate far greater than the ability to process it. in the new journal of physics (2008) guo-qing zhang et al. empirically charted the growth of the internet, showing how it doubles in size every 5.32 years. included in this growth of ready accessible data is the increased ease of communicating ideas. this makes the notion of globalisation, and what marshall mcluhan referred to as the global village , even more apparent. increase in communication through such technologies creates blurring at an application stage for digital tools. the lines between the specialist and non-specialist begin to breakdown, with questions pertaining to, and demands placed upon, technologies becoming more sophisticated and complex over time. one need only note the development, commercialisation, proliferation and wide ranging application of terrestrial mid laser scanning as a survey tool in the last 11 years to see such processes in action. in some ways the legitimisation of such a product in everyday workflows in such a short amount of time is dangerous. it is not clear what questions should be asked with and of such technologies. not to mention the datasets they produce. david southam, faro uk, preparing the camera mount for over drape of photo image on the laser obtained point cloud. workshops and demonstrations finally, it remains to describe and discuss some of the individual contributions of the participants. the demonstrations at the beginning consisted of best practice for digital preservation processes for cultural heritage, including field implementations of the latter - code name remixing truro cathedral - and demonstrations of arm based and phase based mid range laser scanning by david southam and darren robins, faro, uk. best practice for digital preservation of cultural heritage included approaches to archiving and cataloguing techniques, training in reflective transformation imaging provided by dr michael ashley and joao barbosa and on site laser scans of truro cathedral, cornwall, uk. making digital aspirations for cultural heritage applications tangible indeed, even aspirations can be difficult to define in this fast-moving scene. for instance, organising workshops such as we did, centred on the digital preservation of cultural heritage, can be like trying to catch sand when it falls through the fingers. digital is not a static concept, is constantly evolving and ever changing. the ethos behind the series of workshops was one of blue-skies thinking. delegates had to consider how to comment on the current climate for the digitisation of heritage, and how technologies compliment, compare and relate to one another. skill sets traditionally associated with a geomatics background were intermingled with those from computer science, engineering, archaeology, media communications and digital orchestration, as well as a host of other disciplines. the tag line used to open the workshops was data capture, processing and archiving is as much about capturing hearts and minds as using digital technologies to capture and work with information. as the sessions went on this was reiterated, also emphasizing that digital is a malleable medium to work in. the only restrictions placed upon digital tools and datasets are the ones governing the imaginations of the individuals working with the information. latest news? visit www.geoinformatics.com plenary session after the demonstrations, the plenary session started with three presentations from caradoc peters, adam p. spring and julian richards. each focused on different facets of archaeology gone digital, acting as stimulus for the open discussion section of the session. panel members for the open discussion included dr michael ashley, joao barbosa, dr caradoc peters, julian richards and adam p. spring. presentations the plenary session was followed by individual presentations. data capture, data processing and archiving were the linking themes for all presentations. image based data capture and processing was represented through adam technologies (adamtech), headwall photonics and joao barbosa. jason birch managing director of adamtech discussed the applications of his company s photogrammetry packages using a number of examples ranging from tooth to landscape in size. the presentation was further complemented by john ferguson s headwall photonics - presentation on hyper spectral imaging, highlighting that images can produce material analysis as well 3d co-coordinated datasets. andrew jinman s presentation on the work twofour april/may 2009 55
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