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Mario Hernandez, Maria Rosa Cardenas, Davide Palmisano, Patrick McCann, Michele Mostarda, Silvia Boi, Luigi Briguglio, Carlo Meghini

UNESCO Cultural Testbed:

Current state of the art

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UNESCO World Heritage List

The World Heritage List includes 890 properties forming part of the cultural and natural heritage which the World Heritage Committee considers as having outstanding universal value.

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UNESCO WHL Nomination

• A Member State makes a Tentative List of properties it may decide to submit for Inscription as World Heritage Sites.

• With the help of the World Heritage Centre, the Member State puts together an exhaustive Nomination File for a property on its Tentative List. The Centre reviews it and sends it to Advisory Bodies for evaluation.

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UNESCO WHL Nomination• The World Heritage

Committee meets once a year to decide which sites will be inscribed on the World Heritage List.

• The criteria for inscription are explained in the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention

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UNESCO WHL Online

The World Heritage list is available on line at: http://whc.unesco.org

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The website contains the principal data from every World Heritage site:

-General description-Maps-Related documents-Pictures-Threats

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Under “Documents” all the data related to the Advisory Body Evaluation, the Nomination File (prepared by the concerned State Party aiming inscription of a property on the WH List) and the Decisions taken by the World Heritage Committee are listed.

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UNESCO WH sites data

• Physical materials submitted as part of a nomination file are: legal documentation, maps, pictures, slides, and bibliography related to the site.

• Digital materials are collated in a single PDF document. The files submitted are discarded - the PDF is the sole record of the digital materials kept by UNESCO.

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CASPAR and the WH Inscription Process

• More and more materials in Nomination Files are–Digital

–More complex than simple text and images

• The current procedures are inadequate for dealing with these issues

• A new concern for UNESCO: the preservation of digital data.

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The importance of digital data preservation (background)

• Globally in 2006, humankind produced over 161 billion gigabytes of data. Trends show these patterns increasing by a factor of six by 2010 leading to zettabytes (one sextillion bytes) of new information.

• With standards and protocols changing as technologies move forward we often lose the ability to access what we once thought was important enough to record.

• For example, an estimated 44% of Websites that existed just a decade ago have vanished.

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UNESCO and the digital data preservation

International concern over the loss of digital knowledge have prompted UNESCO to adopt in 2003 UNESCO the Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage.

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UNESCO and the digital data preservation

• The Charter presents the key principles to be adopted by UNESCO's Member States in order to ensure the ongoing protection of digital heritage.

• It outlines the arguments for guarding against the loss of digital heritage, the measures required to protect and preserve digital heritage and the roles and responsibilities of UNESCO and Member States towards ensuring the preservation of digital heritage.

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CASPAR a solution for the preservation of UNESCO’s digital data

• More and more digital data is produced every day at UNESCO.

• After the adoption of the Charter the organization started to be aware of threats that are facing our digital data.

• We need to start preserving the data inside the organization.

• CASPAR: a solution for the preservation of UNESCO’s digital data

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A concrete case:Why preserving digital data?

Preserved digital data = preserved WH site

The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

• The Buddhas of Bamyian, a UNESCO World Heritage site, were two monumental statues of standing Buddhas carved during the VIth century into the side of a cliff in the Bamyan valley.

• In 2001 they were intentionally dynamited and destroyed by the Taliban.

• After the destruction a reconstruction campaign was started.

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

• Images from Internet, photos taken by tourists and high resolution metric photographs that were scanned were used as basis.

• The image were matched to extract the 3D points;• A point cloud was created in order to get and

surface triangulation;• - texture mapping and visualization.

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

Images from Internet, photos taken by tourists and high resolution metric photographs that were scanned were used as basis.

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The images were matched to extract the 3D points.

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

After the triangulation of the point cloud, a 3D surface is obtained.

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

The computer model was used to reconstruct a physical model of the Great Buddha of Bamiyan. The point cloud of the photogrammetric reconstruction was imported in a digitally programmed machine tool.

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The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Afghanistan)

A 1:200 model statue of the Great Buddha was recreated as a first try.

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CASPAR a solution for the preservation of UNESCO’s digital data

• Which CASPAR components are we using and which ensure our data preservation?

– DAMS: Managing the actors

– PACK + PDS: Storing the digital heritage objects into the digital archive for long term preservation

– POM: Notify of change events in order to prevent damage

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Ensure data preservation

The UNESCO Application

• Web application

• Prototype to demonstrate the integration of CASPAR digital preservation concepts and practices into the WH workflow

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The UNESCO Application

Users can• Browse and search submitted WH sites

and associated materials• Submit material pertaining to sites

–Attach appropriate Representation Information to materials

• Manage Designated Communities• Send and receive notifications about

events relevant to the stored materials

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Preserved digital data = preserved WH site

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