3D GIS for cultural heritage restoration: A 'white box' workflow

Structures of architectural heritage are constantly exposed to natural and human-made threats that can compromise their cultural and artistic values. This is the case of the Roman city of Pompeii, whose preserving conditions nowadays are so critical to let a group of Unesco-appointed experts consider the possible inscription of the property on the list of “World Heritage in Danger”. In this respect, improving the effectiveness of preservation strategies becomes a crucial task. A great contribution in this direction is given by the combination of digital technologies such as laser scanning, photogrammetry and computer vision-based techniques and 3D geographic information systems (3D GIS), whose integrated use could exponentially increase the effectiveness of conservation strategies of ancient buildings. This paper presents the results of a research developed as part of the Swedish Pompeii Project, a fieldwork initiated from the Swedish Institute in Rome in 2000. Main objectives of this research were (i) to develop a set of integrated digital methods to be extensively adopted by conservation specialists in the practice of preservation management; (ii) to deal with several aspects connected to the preservation of an ancient structure in a 'fully-3D' environment; (iii) to take advantage of GIS analytic tools for investigating architectural structures in three-dimensions.