135
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
