e provide a permanent record of all monuments, groups of 
buildings and sites that are to be destroyed or altered in 
any way, or where at risk from natural events or human ac- 
tivities; 
e provide information for administrators and planners at 
national, regional or local levels to make sensitive 
planning and development control policies and decisions; 
e provide information upon which appropriate and 
sustainable use may be identified, and the effective 
research, management, maintenance programs and 
construction works may be planned. 
Finally, the records should be 
® preserved in a safe archive, and the archive's environment 
must ensure permanence of the information and freedom 
from decay to recognized international standards. 
* accessible to the statutory authorities, to concerned 
professionals and to the public, where appropriate, for the 
purposes of research, development controls and other 
administrative and legal processes. 
e readily available, if possible on the site, for the purposes of 
research on the heritage, management, maintenance and 
disaster relief. 
* standardized in format, to facilitate the exchange and 
retrieval of information at a local, national or international 
level. 
®° make appropriate use of up-to-date information technology 
for the effective assembly, management and distribution of 
recorded information. 
The keywords in all above statements and International 
Agreements are : 
l. Recording of a vast amount of 4-Dimensional multi- 
source, multi-format and multi-content information, in 
proper levels of accuracy and detail. 
2. Inventory by the use of photogrammetric GIS-solutions in 
3D and, as far as available, down dating with historical 
images. 
3. Management of the 4D information in a secure and 
rational way, also susceptible to sharing and distribution 
to other users; Creation of a real-3D-GIS application with 
a relational chronological database. 
4. Visualization and Presentation of the information in a 
user-friendly way, so that different kinds of users can 
actually retrieve the data and acquire useful information; 
Internet and Visualization Techniques 
3. Appropriate use and tuning of the up-to-date Information 
Technology, when aiming at the above tasks. 
While, though, the Principles and Goals in the International 
Agreements are set clearly, the actual use of the up-to-date 
Technology is not clear at all. The matter is getting even more 
difficult with the rapid development of the IT industry and its 
current throughput of significant changes with a time-scale now 
shorter than one year. Additionally, much of the developed 
world is envisaging nowadays a User-Friendly Information 
Society, where the emphasis is on greater user-friendliness, 
user-empowerment, and support for human interactions (see eg. 
the EU ISTAG Report [URL4] with the revealing title 
“Scenarios for Ambient Intelligence"). 
The aims of this research are the : 
e enhancement of the involvement of the public, through a 
better identification, understanding, interpretation and 
presentation of the architectural heritage of their own city. 
e improvement of management and control of all changes to 
the architectural heritage, through "informed" decision- 
making. 
and tries to achieve these targets, through the use of current 
technology for 3D-modelling, visualization and Information 
management. 
A literature survey can reveal many interesting efforts of the 
same kind (eg. Nakos et. al, 2000), while similar 
photogrammetric and visualization techniques have been 
previously reported (eg. Gatti et. al., 1999, Kousoulakou et. al., 
2001a, 2001b, Boehler et. al. 2001, Drewniok et. al., 1996, 
Patias et. al., 1998, Gruber et. al., 1996, Guerra et. al., 1999, 
Imura et. al., 2001, Monti et. al., 2001, Nour el Din et al., 1999, 
Ogleby, 1996, Pomaska, 2000). 
2. ASHORT NOTE OF HISTORY 
Thessaloniki, the second most populated city in Greece, has a 
long history dated back to 3,000 BC, when traces of the first 
inhabitants in the area have been found. The city is founded 
during the Dynasty of Macedonian Emperors by Kassandros, 
who names the city after his wife, sister of Alexander the Great. 
The city's development goes through different historic periods, 
like the Roman, the Byzantine, the Ottoman and finally its 
liberation on 1912. During its history it has repeatedly suffered 
by invasions from Germans, Slavs, Normands, Arabs, Francs, 
Catalans and Venetians. 
The beginning of 20" century finds a wealthy Thessaloniki, 
with an important harbor, a much develpoped public 
transportation system, a gas delivery system, and an electric 
power factory. 
On August 5, 1917, a big fire destroyed a large part of the inner 
city; an area of about | million m?. Due to many wooden 
constructions and to the strong wind the fire was on for three 
days destroying whole blocks. The extent of the damage is 
obvious from aerial photography of that time (see Fig. 1) 
(Vakalopoulos, 1985). After the fire, a new urban plan has been 
designed by the French architect E. Hebrard, to which the city 
owes its current form. 
The historic center, after the fire, is of course been 
reconstructed and the few buildings, which have been salvaged, 
are protected by the greek law as sites of architectural and 
historic value. Besides, due to its high cultural value, the city 
archives, consisting of engineering plans, facade drawings, old 
photos and construction details have been proposed to be put 
under the protection of Unesco, as an item belonging to world 
cultural heritage. 
Our research concerns this part of the city, and offers a man- 
agement solution to this architectural heritage information. 
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