Hand drawn section drawings analyzed in real 3D environment
Kristine Stub Precht
Abstract To answer questions on the urban development in Viking Age and Medieval Odense, we have been experimenting with 3D GIS modeling on Odense City Museums. In this work, our aim is to estimate the volume of the medieval culture layers in the city center, as well as to make a (realistic) topographical model of the Viking Age surface. In our latest experiments, we have been using large-scale geological 3D tools to handle and analyze the data from section drawings. Many archaeological departments have an endless number of hand drawn section drawings in their archives. These drawings are difficult to reuse for analysis on their own. However, since the section drawings from old city centers contains data on many formation processes in an urban context, it is worthwhile to pay them extra attention. In a small-scale investigation, we use Discover 3D to analyze the local topography based on these drawings alone. The anchor points are converted into fictional drill holes on which the drawings are fixed in three dimensions, and combined with the excavation database we can analyze the layers. In a later large-scale experiment, our aim is to combine the section drawings from other archaeological sites in Odense with drill hole data from the public drill hole database. This experiment is planned with assistance from geologists from Odense Municipality where we will use IGIS and Geoscene. In both cases, we use voxels to animate the important layers in 3D and hereby we are able to both visualize and calculate volumes on the most important features and layers. The use of these 3D tools opens up for a better reuse of the many hand drawn section drawings. In this particular case, it facilitates the handling of a big data set and thereby enables us to answer the many questions concerning the formation processes during the early development of Odense City.
