TEHRAN – A number of Iranian cultural heritage experts and their Greek fellows will be holding a series of online workshops on digital tools and techniques such as photogrammetry and 3D modeling.

The workshop will be held for managers of Iran’s World Heritage sites and nationally-registered sites under the auspices of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts, Mehr reported.

In this workshop, participants will get to know the principles of photogrammetry and documentary photography of historical monuments, the report said.

Photogrammetry is the art and science of deriving accurate 3-D metric and descriptive object information from multiple analog and digital images. It is one surveying method among others, e.g. simple and tactile methods, tachymetric and GPS surveys, various scanning methods, or remote sensing from satellites.

Cultural heritage is an essential part of the urban landscape of historical cities. Its great socioeconomic and anthropological value is witnessed by the United Nations’ having included it as part of Sustainable Development Goal 11, which aims to “strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage’.

Despite the global recognition of cultural heritage’s importance and role in enriching our lives, it is under constant menace. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) has acknowledged eight different threats, of which urbanisation – manifested through rapid demographic changes and pressures, homogenisation, loss of identity and, in the worst case, demolition – is seen perhaps as the most significant.

Because these threats are complex and multi-layered, preservation and efficient management of cultural heritage demand robust information. One such information-gathering tool is geo-information technology (GIT), which, through its different forms – remote sensing and graphic information systems (GIS), photogrammetry, and laser scanning – has long been used to document, model and monitor cultural heritage as well as disseminate information about it.

AFM