PRESERVING CULTURAL LANDSCAPES AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL INFORMATION 
WITH THE HELP OF MULTIMEDIA CARTOGRAPHY 
M. Jobst 
Jobstmedia Präsentation Verlag, Welzeneggerstrasse 84, A-9020 Klagenfurt, Austria 
markus@jobstmedia.at 
Commission VI, WG VIII - Cultural Landscapes 
KEY WORDS: Cartography, Exploration, Multimedia, Landscape, Virtual Reality 
ABSTRACT: 
Digital media are best suited for the presentation of regional, urban and specialized topics. Especially the field of multimedia- 
cartography creates new ways of expressing information and transferring discoveries. With this technologies it is much easier to 
make maps comprehensible to a wide range of persons. Maps are no longer an élite tool of a small number of professionals, but 
enable the discussion and information in geographical and thematical aspects. 
Archeology as a scientific discipline explores and tries to find and visualize dependencies of non visual connections of findings and 
building remains. The aim is to receive an understandable general view. For this reason multimedia cartography provides a powerful 
tool for the communication among scientists and for the presentation to a general public. The consideration that the quality of 
presentation is determined by the perception and the thinking of the user, whose reference throughout the evolution is the 3D space, 
should define the way of processing and visualizing information. 
This article shows new ways of the preservation of cultural landscapes and their archeological information with techniques of 
multimedia cartography, highlights the main requirements to datasets and mainly describes the role of multimedia cartography in the 
field of cultural heritage. With the help of the latest developments in the project „Carnuntum 3D“ the suitability for experts, for a 
general public and for the enduring documentation of cultural heritage should be discussed. 
1.INTRODUCTION 
The cultural environment is changing during time. It is 
influenced by human beings, their way of living and nature. In 
the end the result is either the destruction or, in case of human 
influence, the restoration of cultural representatives, depending 
on its importance for a political leadership. 
Historical sciences deal with the reconstruction of ancient 
cultures via their preserved remainings and try to show us an 
understandable general view of these. The regional connections 
and the topography are playing an important part for a 
comprehensive presentation of a cultural environment. The 
usage of objects or buildings is strongly connected to the 
topography of the earth surface and the relation to adjacent 
objects of the same period. 
Once the dependencies within a cultural period are discovered, 
they need to be communicated to expert groups on the one hand 
and a wide public on the other. For this reason multimedia 
cartography provides powerful tools and digital techniques. 
These should be open for the embedding of recordings and 
reconstructions of cultural objects done by other disciplines like 
photogrammetry. These high quality, large scale reproductions 
need a lot of storage memory and a special treatment for 
visualisation. 
Stepping back - to a smaller scale - to show an overview, 
simplifications and algorithms for memory management are 
needed to use the available memory on existing computers more 
efficiently. 
Of course, there are high end computers which have no problem 
with large data volumes, but a cultural theme should be 
accessible for a wide public - using personal computers in a 
standard configuration. 
In addition dealing with different scales requires new 
algorithms for displacement, aggregation, omitting and 
symbolisation. Especially in the field of 3D very few work has 
been done. 
The 3^ dimension plays an important role in multimedia 
cartography facing the consideration that the quality of the 
presentation is set by the perception and the thinking of the 
user, whose reference throughout the evolution is the 3D space. 
The following article describes the project “Carnuntum 3D” 
from the very first beginning until today. The importance of 
cartography for the geo-communication of the cultural heritage 
can be shown by this project and its outstanding region. 
Choices of programming techniques will be mentioned as well 
as demands on data. 
l.lThe term “multimedia” 
For a better understanding short description of the term 
“multimedia” and its characteristics should be given 
[Dransch 2002]: 
- The manipulation , presentation and communication of 
information is done on the computer - all actions are digital. 
- The different media are not related to one another - they are 
independent. 
- It is possible to show different media and processes at the 
same time - multitasking. 
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