Terrestrial laser scanning for urban survey: a test case over the Dalmine company-town

Abstract

Building heritage well displays the identity of the people living in different epochs: the knowledge of its original characters, and the preservation and enhancement along time, require documentary interventions, regarding both the buildings constructive features, like dimension, geo-localization and the urban shape, with others more specifically of historical-architectural or material kind. The new terrestrial laser technologies, integrated with positioning and photographic sensors, allow fast survey and spatial representation both for single building units and for whole urban districts. The large amount of 3D collected data provides an enrichment of the basic geometric knowledge, usually provided by cartographic vector or raster representation. The paper deals with a static-kinematic laser scanning test carried out over the town of Dalmine (Bergamo, Italy), according to the present municipality program of landscape safe-keeping, constructive feature preservation and improvement regarding the historical settlements dating back to the last century twenties and which are highly representative of its company-town past. The survey experiment is also meaningful to validate an operating procedure, based on new technologies, which is innovative, simple, inexpensive enough and conveniently applicable to the urban areas.

Keywords

• Urban environment
• Laser scanning
• Documentation
• Land Enhancement