USING 3D GIS FOR DOCUMENTATION OF HISTORICAL MONUMENT
Zaide DURAN & Gönül TOZ
Istanbul Technical University, Civil Engineering Faculty,
Division Of Photogrammetry, 80626 Maslak / Istanbul TURKEY
E-mail: duranza@itu.edu.tr
Key words: photogrammetry, cultural heritage, documentation, GIS, 3D city model
ABSTRACT
Located on two continent (Europe and Asia) Istanbul is the largest city of Turkey with a population of over 10 million. It is a
combination of a very rich historical background and a modern appearance. It was enriched with mosques, palaces, foundations,
schools, baths, bridges and viaducts etc. All of these historical events have taken place in the part, which is called *Old City of
Istanbul". The Fatih (Zeyrek) is one of the most important historical districts in this city. This paper focuses on a Geographic
Information System (GIS) approach was employed in the study area.
INTRODUCTION
Architecture is a substantial part of cultural heritage. While
some elements of cultural heritage could be protected by putting
them behind a glass in a museum, whereas architectural
monuments are widely used and endangered by long term
influences like traffic or air pollution or destructive events
causing heavy damage like earthquakes, fire, war etc. But by all
means when monuments are seriously damaged, or completely
destroyed, the amount and quality of any surviving
documentation becomes highly important.
Documentation and conservation of historical monuments are
being consideration as tasks of national priority.
Photogrammetry now appears as more efficient and inexpensive
method for this kind of preservation due to the digital
techniques. Today’s user-oriented software is easier to handle
by non-experts, thus widening potential spectrum of application
in architectural and archaeological recording.
Therefore it is necessary to document the actual state of the
architectural monuments in a manner, which opens the
opportunity to detect continuous damage by change detection
techniques and to restore the monument in case of heavy
damage. Before starting to acquire new data on the monument
already existing data sources have to be obtained, e.g. existing
plans of previous restorations, ancient pictures or
documentation's of architectural research projects.
Today we have the possibility, besides obtaining of data in
different forms, to process and store them without taking much
care about their mass, but their reliability. So the possibility of
implementing of an information system in maintenance of
cultural heritage opens the opportunity to control the
preservation, interventions and to rationalize the way of
managing the architectonic wealth. Also the above stated data
must be completed with data obtained during the structural
analysis and sources of data, which are relevant for protection
and restriction of the architectural monuments. In order to
simplify the management and to access to the information, a
methodology must be established. The system has to be
responsible for capturing and storing the data in digital form and
providing appropriate software for navigating through the data
and investigating different relations between them for different
research groups.
Today, many of historic urban areas are endangered. Some of
them are being damaged or even destroyed by creeping urban
development and new technologies. Therefore, safe guarding
the heritage depends on how we list and document it.
Information system are seen by an increasing number of
architect as being the information technology to be adopted for
location analysis, spatial data management and spatial
modeling.
The proper management of the cultural heritage requires a very
deep and thorough understanding of its value, history, condition
and historical characteristics. The access to all of the
information related to any building/site is the key to its
protection and presentation. Considering this enormous amount
of information required and produced for each building/site, the
existence of a “heritage information system” is essential.
The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a relatively new
technology that joins the computer science advantages with the
modern systems of capture of data, so that it allows the
integration and the treatment of all type of information of a
computer team, in a simple way on the part of any user that
requires to work with this information. À GIS include software
and hardware tools, and a group of procedures elaborated to
facilitate capture, edition, administration, manipulation,
analysis, modeling, representation and exit of spatial referenced
and semantic data, to solve any type of planning, administration,
storage, and so on information concerning problem.
Digital photogrammetry and the GIS provide a group of
advantages and benefits in the architectural tasks impossible to
obtain with such an efficiency, velocity and economy by means
of other procedures.
Photogrammetry is a technique whereby information about the
position, size and shape can be attained. Photogrammetric
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