Building assessment using shadow analysis for the architectural documentation

Abstract

One essential approach in preserving architectural heritage is the documentation of building geometries and their sites are thoroughly photographed of existing buildings. For instance, an automated detection of the locations and the extraction of geometry information of the buildings are intrinsic attributes of the architectural design of building interiors and exteriors in cultural heritage documentation and preservation. In this study, contributions of remotely sensed images to detect the sites and shapes of the buildings based on shadow analysis were evaluated. The aim of this paper is to develop an approach to assist in recording and documenting the external geometry of historic buildings and their real location supplying much ease and time-saving in protection projects of cultural heritage. A distinctive merit of the proposed approach is its ability to document the spatial distribution of the detecting buildings by extracting the graphic coordinates of their corners without any additional data. Our experiments demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach on two cases, including the architectural documentation of external edges, shape, size, site, orientation, and coordinates. Thus, our new approach offers a tool to document architectural and cultural heritage which can help in capturing and recording all the relevant data and information, both in visual and written format.