RAPID Aerial Scanning of UNESCO Cultural Heritage Sites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Mohamed al-Farhan, Ahmad al-Hasanat, Mohamed Shalaby, Luca Passone, Thomas Levy, Neil Smith
Abstract The rapid and extensive digital documentation of cultural heritage is now being made possible through the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and photogrammetry. A joint archaeological and computer vision project called RAPID was initiated in 2014 to digitally capture several of Saudi Arabia’s major cultural heritage sites throughout the country. By using a combination of non-invasive aerial and terrestrial 3D scanning techniques, the UNESCO cultural heritage sites of Al-Hijr (Ancient Dedan, Madain Saleh), ad-Dariyah and Al-Balad Historic Jeddah were digitally recorded. A major obstacle faced for each of these sites was their sheer size and complexity. In particular, Historic Jeddah’s dense urban cityscape consisting of hundreds of Rowshan tower houses spans an area of 250,000 m². Each site provided unique challenges in how UAVs and time-of-flight laser scanning were integrated. The project has resulted in massive datasets and ground-breaking software just to manage and visualize it. In this paper, we present the results, methodology, learned best practices, and integrated software and hardware developed to digitally document these massive areas of cultural significance.
