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3D MODELING AND VISUALIZATION OF LARGE CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES AT 
VERY HIGH RESOLUTION: THE BAMIYAN VALLEY AND ITS STANDING BUDDHAS 
Armin Gruen, Fabio Remondino, Li Zhang 
Institute for Geodesy and Photogrammetry, ETH Zurich, Switzerland 
E-mail: <agruen><fabio><zhangl>@geod.baug.ethz.ch 
Commission V - WG 6 
KEY WORDS: Cultural Heritage, SPOT, IKONOS, Reconstruction, Modeling, Texture, Visualization 
ABSTRACT 
In this paper we present the modeling and visualization of the cultural heritage area of Bamiyan, Afghanistan. The region is situated 
ca 200 km north-west of Kabul and it was one of the major Buddhist centres until the ninth century AD. The two stazding Buddhas 
belonged to some of the most famous Buddhist monuments world-wide. In 2001 they were destroyed through an act of vandalism by 
the Taleban militia. In our previous reports we have already presented the 3D computer reconstruction of the Great Buddha while in 
this contribution we will describe the terrain modeling of the surrounding area from satellite images, the 3D reconstruction of the 
entire rock cliff of Bamiyan and the modeling of the two empty niches where the Buddha statues once stood. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The region of Bamiyan, ca 200 km North-West of Kabul, 
Afghanistan, was one of the major Buddhist centres from the 
second century AD up to the time when Islam entered the arca 
in the ninth century. For centuries, Bamiyan lay in the heart of 
the famous Silk Road, offering rest to caravans carrying goods 
across the area between China and Western Empires. 
Strategically situated in a central location for travellers from 
North to South and East to West, Bamiyan was a common 
meeting place for many ancient cultures. In the region, many 
Buddha statues and a hundreds of caves were carved out of the 
sedimentary rock. In particular, near the village of Bamiyan, at 
2600 meters altitude, there were three big statues of Buddha 
carved out of a vertical cliff (Figure 1). The famous standing 
Buddha statues, as well as other small statues in Foladi and 
Kakrak have been destroyed by the Taleban militia in March 
2001 (Figure 2, left). 
In 2003, the World Heritage Committee has decided to include 
the cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the 
Bamiyan valley in the UNESCO World Heritage List 
[http://whe.unesco.org/]. The whole area is in a fragile state of 
conservation as it has suffered from abandonment, military 
actions and explosions. The major dangers are the risk of 
imminent collapse of the Buddha niches with the remaining 
fragments of the statues, further deterioration of still existing 
mural paintings in the caves, looting and illicit excavation. 
pu ¥ * 
Figure 1: Panorama of the Bamiyan cliff with the three Buddha 
statues prior to demolition. 
In our previous reports we have already presented the 3D 
computer reconstruction of the Great Buddha of Bamiyan 
    
(Figure 2, right, Gruen et al., 2002, 2003). In this article we 
describe the 3D modeling procedures for (1) the terrain of the 
whole Bamiyan area, (2) the entire rock cliff of Bamiyan and 
(3) the two empty niches where the Buddha statues once stood. 
For the modeling of the cliff and the niches, images and 
geodetic measurements acquired during a field campaign in 
August 2003 were used. 
— 
     
Figure 2: The expi sion of March 2001 that destroyed the Great 
Buddha statue in 3 .miyan (left). The 3D computer model of the 
figure, as reconst- icted from existing images (right, Gruen et 
al., 2002, 2003). 
The final goal is ine generation of virtual flights over the 
UNESCO cultura! 1eritage site. This includes a comparison of 
the previous situat on. with our high-resolution 3D models and 
the current situation with the empty niches. 
A photo-realistic 3D digital model of the entire Bamiyan area 
and a detailed view of the cliff with and without the standing 
Buddhas will be presented. 
2. TERRAIN MODELING FROM SATELLITE 
IMAGERY 
For the 3D modeling and visualization of the area of interest, an 
accurate DIM is required. We had the contours of Russian map 
1:50 000 digitised, but when we tried to map an IKONOS 
image onto the derived DTM we realised that its quality was not 
sufficient. Aerial images were not available to us and the idea to 
acquire them was unrealistic, due to the absence of any 
surveying company operating in that arca. So space-based