ITR/AP+IM: Computational Tools for Modeling, Visualizing and Analyzing Historic and Archaeological Sites

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

e are proposing to develop computational tools for researchers and students to model, visualize, and analyze historic and ancient sites. This proposal addresses four major scientific components to support this research. First, we are proposing new methods of creating complex, 3-D, photorealistic models of large sites. This includes a mobile robot sensing system that can be used as an intelligent sensing device over a large scale. Second, we are proposing to develop new methods to image below-ground data accurately and efficiently. These methods are especially suited to modeling the wealth of subsurface information at archaeological sites. Third, we will be developing new database technology to catalog and access a site's structures, artifacts, objects, and historical references. This will significantly improve a user's ability to query and analyze a site's information. Fourth, we have created a wearable augmented reality system for presenting georegistered information to mobile users, using overlaid graphics and sound. We will extend this system to create a new class of information visualization systems that integrate 3-D above- and below-ground models, 2-D images, text and other web-based resources to annotate the physical environment We will apply this system to support scientists in the field, as well to allow on-site and remote tours of historic and ancient sites. The research will utilize a local testbed, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and a unique and important archaeological excavation at the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt. The project will attract students and the public to the study of world heritage; provide an exceptional opportunity for active learning; and develop our ability to explore, analyze, critically evaluate and interpret material culture within historical contexts. The challenge is to bring the on-site experiences that develop these skills to the classroom and the public in general. Through critical inquiry and a variety of techniques, teachers and students can reconstruct examples of material culture to develop a complex understanding of the past. In this way, we can resist the temptation to replicate with new technologies what we have done successfully with other means and instead expand the possibilities for learning. Through learning in context, this project will bring together the primary sources of various fields and draw the social sciences out of the classroom into the historical milieu. This project will hopefully redefine the relationships among technology, faculty research and curriculum content. Most important, it will disseminate this information to as wide an audience as possible.