HERITAGE
Tom Anstey, journalist, Attractions Management
SAVERS OF THE
LOST ARK
Elizabeth Lee, vice president of CyArk, on her organisation’s mission to scan and share detailed heritage site maps from around the world
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rotecting heritage sites from damage and destruction poses a unique set of challenges. The Islamic State (ISIS) is an example of a group causing willful destruction of antiquities and with swathes of the Middle
East in conflict, sites which have stood for millennia are being destroyed – sometimes deliberately – on a daily basis. Heritage sites are also lost to storms,
earthquakes, decay, development, lack of proper care and many other causes. CyArk’s mission is to both preserve heritage for future generations and make it accessible to today’s public. The non-profit organisation was founded in 2003 and uses cutting- edge technologies to create detailed 3D representations of significant cultural heritage sites before they’re damaged or destroyed by natural disasters, conflicts or the passage of time. To create the representations that help
preserve these sites for the future, CyArk uses an advanced system of laser scanners to mark millions of points that create an almost perfect 3D data set, which can then be used to create a solid 3D model. Elizabeth Lee, vice president at CyArk, explains what measures the company is taking to protect the world’s cultural heritage from disappearing completely.
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architectural drawing, which could then be used to reconstruct the monument.
“In museums there’s an opportunity to license this data in a way that generates revenue back to the site”
What is CyArk? CyArk is a non-profit foundation with offices in the US and UK. Our mission is to use new technologies to digitally capture and preserve cultural heritage sites around the world. The principal technology that we employ is 3D capture using lasers and photography to create a detailed and highly accurate record of sites and monuments. We archive all the data so if anything happened to these sites, we have engineering-grade data that can be used to reconstruct them. In the meantime, that same 3D data can be used for outputs like education and cultural tours.
Do you mean “reconstruct” the sites virtually or in reality? The latter. If something were to fall down, the documentation we have is accurate enough to put into a traditional
How does funding work for you? We’re fundraising all the time. We plan fundraising events around specific projects, but our funding comes from a number of sources, such as government grants, corporate and individual donations and support from our technology partners.
Who are your technology partners? CyArk was founded by Ben Kacyra, a pioneer in bringing 3D laser scanning technology to the market via his commercial company, Cyra Technologies. That company was acquired in 2001
by a surveying company called Leica Geosystems. We still work with them and with many of the other manufacturers of this tech, such as Trimble, Autodesk, Faro, Topcon – some of the big survey compa- nies. On the archiving and data storage, we work with Iron Mountain and others.
What’s the cost of mapping one site? The costs are changing all the time and the technology is improving. To do everything from capturing in the field to processing the data then getting it online used to have a ballpark figure of $50,000 (£34,000, €47,000) per project. However, we’re seeing those figures start
AM 2 2015 ©CYBERTREK 2015
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