Cultural heritage preservation by using blockchain technologies

Ubiquitous digitization enables promising options for cultural heritage preservation. Therefore, a new approach is presented that considers deployment scenarios by linking heritage science to tourism. Such an approach is necessary because neither technology nor society views can be treated separately to obtain deployable solutions of a wider social, and even national importance. Clearly, while the traditional approaches to cultural heritage preservation will remain a gold standard, they will be increasingly complemented by digital preservation techniques. Thus, based on practical implementations and lessons learnt in other areas, this multidisciplinary framework paper analyses existing disruptive information technologies deployments. In line with the findings it presents a novel technological architecture tailored to the needs of cultural heritage preservation that deploys an open blockchain architecture. The architecture preserves the advantages of traditional blockchains, which made this technology so important, while enabling energy efficient implementations that can be deployed in mobile applications. By additionally using the contribution-ware principle it links it to tourism, where the identification of users focused incentives and business models play a central role. It is obvious that tourism is a good candidate in such preservation efforts due to the organic links between it and cultural heritage and can support further developments in the heritage preservation domain.

3D technologies for intangible cultural heritage preservation—literature review for selected databases

Conservation of cultural heritage is nowadays a very important aspect of our lives. Thanks to such legacy we gain knowledge about our ancestors, methods of production and ways of their life. The rapid development of 3D technology allows for more and more faithful reflection of this area of life. The rich cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, can be preserved for future generations due to the use of advanced 3d technologies. They provide the means of documenting, recovering and presenting items of cultural heritage. Not only buildings or monuments are taken into account. An important aspect of our culture is intangible cultural heritage (ICH), including acting, crafting or storytelling, passed down from generation to generation. Due to the rapid development of civilisation and the migration of people, this type of culture is often forgotten. That is why the preservation of ICH is an important element of today world. The main aim of this study, on the basis of the gathered papers, is to identify: (1) the general state of use of 3D digital technologies in ICH; (2) the topics and themes discussed; (3) the technologies used in the study; (4) locations of research centres conducting such studies; and (5) the types of research carried out. The methodology consists of the following main steps: defining study questions, searching query development, selection of publications in Scopus, Web of Knowledge and IEEE Xplore, finally the study execution and the analysis of the obtained results. The results show that for ICH the most often used technologies are: 3D visualisation, 3D modelling, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and motion capture systems.

State policy of Russia in the field of historical and cultural heritage preservation in the practice of historical and cultural tourism

Актуальность исследования государственной политики Российской Федерации в сфере сохранения исторического и культурного наследия связана с тенденциями развития историко-культурного туризма. Историко-культурное наследие стало индикатором государственной политики стран мира, заняв достойное место в межнациональных отношениях, выступая инструментом политического, культурного и экономического диалога, по сути, играя немалую роль в современной геополитике. Сегодня государственные инвестиции в отрасль туризма стимулируют культурные программы, сохранение этнических музеев, театров, музыкальных площадок, развивают природные и исторические парки, культурные ландшафты. Историко-культурный туризм выполняет задачу ознакомления с историей страны, региона, достопримечательностями исторического места, богатого материальным и культурным наследием, расширяет возможности сохранения и транслирования культуры народов. Это способствует региональному развитию и привлекательности территории. Цель исследования - рассмотреть государственную политику России как универсальный инструментарий создания историко-культурного облика территории в международном и национальном туризме, повышения уровня профессиональной подготовки кадров, обеспечивающих данное направление. Методологическую основу исследования определяет группа методов, которые структурируются в общенаучные и специальные. Общенаучную базу анализа фактов, явлений, институтов отрасли составили общие приемы формальной логики и связанные с ними частно-научные методики. Главным методом выступает прием исторического анализа туризма как отрасли социальной жизни. Системно-структурный метод использован для теоретического понимания видов туризма, сравнительно-исторический метод позволяет отследить развитие туристской отрасли в регионе с позиций исторической перспективы. Правовая основа общественного института прослежена на основе метода толкования норм права. Задачи исследования заключаются в проведении анализа теоретического положения об историко-культурном туризме и исторического анализа роли государственных институтов в развитии территории. The relevance of the study of the state policy of the Russian Federation in the field of historical and cultural heritage preservation in the historical aspect is associated with the trend of development of the direction of historical and cultural tourism. Historical and cultural heritage has become an indicator of the state policy of the countries of the world, taking a worthy place in interethnic relations, acting as an instrument of political, cultural and economic dialogue, in fact, playing a significant role in modern geopolitics. Today, public investment in the tourism industry encourages cultural programs, the preservation of ethnic museums, theaters, music venues, and the development of natural and historical parks and cultural landscapes. Historical and cultural tourism performs the task of familiarizing with the history of the country, the region, the sights of a historical place rich in material and cultural heritage, expands the possibilities of preserving and broadcasting the culture of peoples. This contributes to the regional development and attractiveness of the territory. The purpose of the study is to consider the state policy of Russia as a universal tool for creating the historical and cultural image of the territory in international and national tourism, to increase the level of professional training of personnel providing this direction. The methodological basis of the research is consisted of a group of methods that are subdivided into general scientific and special. The general scientific basis for the analysis of facts, phenomena, and the allocation of industry institutions was made up of general methods of formal logic and related private scientific methods. The main method is the method of historical analysis of tourism as a branch of social life. The system-structural approach is used for the theoretical understanding of the types of tourism. Comparative-historical, to track the development of the tourism industry in the region in a historical perspective. The legal basis of the public institution is traced based on the method of interpretation of the norms of law, etc. The objectives of the study are to make an analysis of the theoretical position on historical and cultural tourism and the historical analysis of the role of state institutions in the development of the territory.

Cost–Benefit Analysis in the Evaluation of Cultural Heritage Project Funding

Cultural heritage has, for a long time, been considered a source of wealth and well-being for economies. Currently, considerable investments have been allocated for its renewal and maintenance that often surpass the budgets of owners, local communities, and other interested users. Cultural heritage valorisation is expensive and is a great economic challenge. Infrastructural investment, i.e., conservation and restoration, are just one part of the total costs of cultural heritage preservation, while other investments relate to regular operation and maintenance. One of the most difficult decisions for those who design the cultural heritage restoration projects is how to finance them, i.e., what the most efficient financial instruments are for renewal of cultural heritage. These assumptions have instigated interest in the evaluation of services resulting from common good functions of cultural heritage, such as economic, educational, historical, technological, ecological, and climate, as well as tourism and recreational. Therefore, this article starts from the analysis of potential funding sources for cultural heritage through the European Union (EU) funds; a method of economic evaluation of the return on investments and cost–benefit analysis is suggested as a method that should be used in decision making on these interventions.

Algorithms for contactless scanning of book monuments

The article is devoted to the questions of cultural heritage preservation by creating the digital collection of book monuments. The original documents are monuments of book culture and their dilapidated state requires careful handling, splitting of documents for scanning is extremely undesirable. The market does not present the equipment for contactless scanning of books without embroidering, therefore an algorithm that allows digitalizing book monuments in a contactless way has been developed. The technique has been constructed using an algorithm based on the projection of the light grid on the object scanned. The authors propose a sequence of actions consisting of image processing and comparing the results between two images. The first snapshot determines the initial parameters of the grid; the second snapshot determines the actual distortion of the test snapshot. Subsequent mathematical processing allows getting scanned images without absence of geometric distortions of the scanned page due to the system of using the two-dimensional array of corrections. The application of the system has been modeled on the example of «The legend of the destruction of Siberian cities of Tara and Tyumen by the lesser Tatars / / Collection of moral stories, words, lives and other articles [hand.]». The evaluation parameters of the simulation result have been the following: text distinctness, absence of geometric distortions, color quality, uniformity of document scanning quality within a single book, etc., as checked and recognized as high by the experts.The experience described opens possibilities of book monuments digitization using the new algorithm. The development of the system is aimed at expanding the database of objects of material culture to be digitized, perfecting the software, improving the quality of digital images, as well as the capabilities of image recognition and search for the document itself and information it contains.

INTEGRATION OF PHOTOGRAMMETRY, COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY AND ENDOSCOPY FOR GYROSCOPE 3D DIGITIZATION

Cultural heritage preservation via 3D digitization is becoming more and more important. Besides conventional buildings and landmarks, many technical instruments and artifacts, which belong to tech heritage (TH), are also of great importance, historically and didactically. Gyroscopes, which can be dated back for 200 years, are fascinating instruments with complex structures and different working principles. With such properties, any 3D digitization of Gyroscopes could not be realized by simply using conventional solutions of photogrammetry or laser scanning. In our work, we introduce photogrammetry, endoscopy and computed tomography (CT) for an integrated 3D digitization solution. Though photogrammetry has been widely used for the purpose of cultural heritage preservation, 3D reconstructions using the other two sensor systems have their own challenges. For an endoscope, a pre-calibration solution has been put forward and the Structure-from-Motion (SfM) process has been optimized to deal with the drift caused by a long imaging trajectory. Regarding the CT 3D reconstruction, we mainly focus on the 3D representation’s completeness and the denoising process. In the section of data integration, we designed different methods according to the characteristics of the objects as well as the 3D models from different sonsors. In case of limited overlap between the pair of point clouds, the Gauss-Helmert model with manually picked control points is applied for the estimation of the transformation matrix. CT point clouds, which hold only the intensity values representing the material attenuation, could be integrated with photogrammetry data via a surface color mapping method using the photogrammetric images or the primitive based corresponding virtual control points. Through our research, the concept of integrating photogrammetry, endoscopy and CT for 3D digitization of Gyroscopes is validated. Furthermore, advantages and disadvantages involved in the complete process are discussed and a solid foundation has been laid for further research.

THE EXPLORATION OF APPLYING OF SPATIAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN GENERAL PLAN FOR REGIONAL CULTURAL HERITAGE CONSERVATION

With the rapid urbanization and the sharp increasing of the amount of official identification cultural heritages, the Chinese government and public are paying more attention to the regional comprehensive preservation, exhibition and utilization of the cultural heritages in recent years. “General Plan for Regional Cultural Heritage Preservation” offers a new systematic conservating solution for the cluster of cultural heritages in an administrative region. For the past few years, lots of new spatial information technologies have been applied in the preservation of cultural heritages, which tremendously improved the level and effectiveness of cultural heritage recording, management, monitoring and exhibition. This article will focus on discussing the methods and applying prospect of the technologies of geographic information system, 3D laser scanning, photogrammetry modeling in general planning for regional cultural heritage preservation and utilization.In recent years, with the continuous development of cultural heritage preservation in China, an increasing number of provinces and cities began to organize General Plans for regional cultural heritage preservation (hereinafter called "General Plan"), through which local governments are able to control the risk and improve the preservation level of cultural heritage (IAH, 2004).This paper will introduce the working framework of the General Plan and the core problems to be solved, and then analyze the application mode and prospect of spatial information technology in the General Plan.