An Open-Source Web Platform for 3D Documentation and Storytelling of Hidden Cultural Heritage

Abstract

The rapid evolution of the urban landscape highlights the need to digitally document the state and historical transformations of heritage sites in densely urbanised areas through the combination of different geomatics survey approaches. Moreover, it is necessary to raise awareness of sites by developing strategies for their dissemination to a diverse audience through engaging, interactive, and accessible 3D web platforms. This work illustrates a methodology for the digital documentation and narration of a cultural heritage site through the implementation of a lightweight and replicable 3D navigation platform based on open-source technologies. Such a solution aims to be an easy-to-implement low-cost approach. The methodology is applied to the case study of the Farnese Castle in Piacenza (Italy), describing the data collection and documentation carried out with an in situ survey and illustrating how the resulting products were integrated into the web platform. The exploration functionalities of the platform and its potential for different types of audiences, from experts to users not familiar with 3D objects and geomatics products, were evaluated and documented on a ReadTheDocs website, allowing interested users to reproduce the project for other applications thanks to the template code available on GitHub.

Keywords

• WebGL
• Potree
• storytelling
• digital documentation
• photogrammetry
• terrestrial laser scanning