Workshop on 3D Digital Documentation of the Cultural Heritage and Its Application ‘3D Documentation of Built Heritage’ held in Bahrain
The Japan Centre for International Cooperation in Conservation of Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TOBUNKEN) and Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA) co-organized a workshop for 3D digital documentation at Bahrain National Museum from 28th to 30th October, 2015. This series of workshops was started from a request from BACA, which has been promoting the introduction of 3D digital documentation techniques to the field of conservation of cultural heritage. As previous workshops had been held in Bahrain and Japan, this time the workshop focused on the ‘3D documentation of built heritage’ for intermediate-level practitioners, welcoming 13 experts of cultural heritage, 11 from Bahrain and 2 from UAE.
On the first day of workshop, lectures were held regarding the documentation methods and utilisation examples of 3D digital documentation for built heritage. After the lectures, the participants tried to document a building by themselves using 3D photogrammetry and Lidar on smartphones at the Fakhro House in the World heritage site, the ‘Pearling path.’ On the second day, participants practiced the documentation with 3D laser scanning in the exhibition room of Bahrain National Museum in the morning, and documentation with 3D photogrammetry and RTK-GNSS of the burial mounds in Janabiyah in the afternoon. The third day’s topic was 3D data utilization. The participants learned methods to create contents for an online digital museum utilising the 3D data of the exhibition room of museum that they had documented by themselves on the previous day. They also learned to create 3D models of the burial mounds in Janabiyah with photogrammetry, and published the models on the digital twin platform ‘3D DB viewer,’ which was co-developed by The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.
The participants showed high motivation in applying these technologies in their daily practice in their respective fields of expertise such as archaeology and architecture, and expressed a willingness to learn further advanced methods. We would like to continue organising these opportunities for knowledge sharing in response to their needs.
This workshop was organized as a part of the project for Exchanges in International Cooperation for Conservation of Cultural Heritage funded by the Agency of Cultural affairs.