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PHOTOPA - DATABASE OF SMALL CZECH HISTORICAL MONUMENTS 
'Karel Pavelka, 2 Radek Chromy, 3 Petr Soucek 
'Head of Laboratory of Photogrammetry, Tel.:+420224354951, Fax:+420224310774, E-mail: pavelka@fsv.cvut.cz 
2 Dept. Mapping and Cartography,Tel.:+420224354655, Fax:+420224310774, E-mail: chromy@fsv.cvut.cz 
3 Dept. Mapping and Cartography,Tel.:+420224354655, Fax:+420224310774, E-mail: soucek@fsv.cvut.cz 
Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Civil Engineering, 
Dept. Mapping and Cartography, Thäkurova 7, 166 29, Prague 6, Czech Republic 
KEY WORDS: digital photogrammetry, historical object documentation, Internet presentation 
ABSTRACT: 
In the Czech Republic there are many historical monuments and most of them have been documented photographically. But hardly 
any can be use in photogrammetry due to absence of measuring attributes. For this reason, a long-term project “Database of 
Historical Monuments in Czech Republic“ has been started at the CTU Prague. The project objective is to create the most extensive 
database and to collect a photo-documentation of small historical monuments on the whole territory of the Czech Republic. The aim 
of the project called PhotoPa is a collection of the photo documentation, which would be sufficient for future geometric 
interpretation of monuments. To fill the PhotoPa system students 4 projects of the Photogrammetry course (80 per year), study branch 
Geodesy and Cartography at the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Prague, are being used. At present, over 200 monuments 
documented in the years 2001 and 2002 are saved in the PhotoPa system and futher will be added in summer 2003. This year we 
will attach previous projects carried out at the Laboratory of Photogrammetry and build-up a new server. This paper presents the 
development of a system based on the open source technology. First we will talk about genesis and history of the PhotoPa project, 
later we will focus on software used for data collection and in the end we will introduce a design of data structure for input and a 
proposal for Internet presentation of mentioned monuments. The PhotoPa project is carried out at the Department Mapping and 
Cartography of the Civil Engineering Faculty (CTU Prague) in co-operation with the Laboratory of Photogrammetry and the 
Laboratory of Quantitative Methods in Monument Research (Faculty of Nuclear Physics and Physical Engineering, CTU Prague). 
1. THE HISTORY OF THE PROJECT 
An idea to realise such a project appeared at the end of the 
year 2000. The aim was definite - an application of students’ 
projects to create a database of the most threatened and unused 
historical monuments in the Czech Republic. Each student has 
to choose one object in the CR (there is a list of recommended 
buildings http://www.supp.cz/html/publikace/seznohrpam), the 
object is geodetically located by the GPS and then transformed 
into the Czech co-ordinate system S-JTSK; photo survey uses 
an elementary photogrammetry method by digital cameras and 
elementary geodetic methods. The project started in spring 
2001. In that period the projects were processed digitally with 
binding regulations, nevertheless a programming conception of 
project and its web presentation were added after extending the 
project team by web specialists in autumn 2001. In summer 
2001 we finished the first version of a of web system model 
based on 86 completed projects.In every academic year about 
80 new projects from all the Czech Republic are finished. The 
projects are processed with development of a method, which 
creates XML document for every single project. Up to now 
about 200 objects have been documented. 
2. THE REGISTRATION OF OBJECTS 
The PhotoPa system consists of several sections. The first part 
is a web system for registration of objects. The registration has 
to be completed during the opening course of Photogrammetry. 
Every student fills in a form consisting of user’s name and 
password, name of the project, e-mail for further 
communication and student’s personal identification number; 
after completing the form every user obtains a unique ID. The 
registration is important for obtaining a unique ID for each 
student and object and it is necessary for avoiding duplications 
and selecting inappropriate objects (too large for a one-term 
project). The teacher operates the system through a web 
interface, which enables to send an e-mail, to accept the project, 
to make a list of registered objects, etc. Nowadays the PhotoPa 
system is launched at the server GaMa.fsv.cvut.cz (Pentium IV 
2GHz, 512MB RAM) with Linux operating system, distributed 
by Debian Woody, the core 2.4.18 and support of PHP4 4.1.12. 
The web service is available on http://gama.fsv.cvut.cz/photopa. 
All web pages of the PhotoPa project are completely valid 
XHTML 1.0 Strict a standard of W3C consortium 
http://validator.w3.org. The second part of the project is a local 
application for collection thedata from students. The work of the 
team of authors is focused on the third part of the project - a 
web presentation of measured objects. The solution is 
developed in two options. The first one is based on 
programming in hitherto existing system and it is in 
development. The second one uses the implementation of