Experiences in Photogrammetric and Laser Scanner Surveing of Architectural Heritage

Abstract

The integration of different methodologies and simplification of procedures is surely one of the most important current themes in survey techniques for researching cultural heritage, especially for architectural heritage.  The traditional methods for the metric survey of an architectural building (including micro geodesy and the stereophotogrammetric survey) are currently being consolidated. However, in the field of the architectural, artistic and archaeological survey, new technologies are now available and this knowledge needs to be more widely used, especially where the heritage is greater and so maintenance is as necessary as it is onerous. This report proposes some operative considerations, which derive from experience developed using the most modern technologies available, in order to compare and discuss the achievable accuracies (even if they are not always strictly necessary) and the operating modalities, especially for architectural surveys. So, the aim of this report is to verify that the simplification of procedures and cheaper solutions do not bring variations to the necessary metric precision or expert photointerpretation analysis. However, it is clear that, without considering the purposes and objectives of the survey, it would not be correct to appraise the survey methods and to classify those using reliability and accuracy criteria. In fact, the objective of a survey determines which tool will be used, according to the requests of the survey client to the survey expert.