Abstract
Abstract. Recent photogrammetric applications, based on dense image matching algorithms, allow to use not only images acquired by digital cameras, amateur or not, but also to recover the vast heritage of analogue photographs. This possibility opens up many possibilities in the use and enhancement of existing photos heritage. The research of the original figuration of old buildings, the virtual reconstruction of disappeared architectures and the study of urban development are some of the application areas that exploit the great cultural heritage of photography. Nevertheless there are some restrictions in the use of historical images for automatic reconstruction of buildings such as image quality, availability of camera parameters and ineffective geometry of image acquisition. These constrains are very hard to solve and it is difficult to discover good dataset in the case of terrestrial close range photogrammetry for the above reasons. Even the photographic archives of museums and superintendence, while retaining a wealth of documentation, have no dataset for a dense image matching approach. Compared to the vast collection of historical photos, the class of aerial photos meets both criteria stated above. In this paper historical aerial photographs are used with dense image matching algorithms to realize 3d models of a city in different years. The models can be used to study the urban development of the city and its changes through time. The application relates to the city centre of Verona, for which some time series of aerial photographs have been retrieved. The models obtained in this way allowed, right away, to observe the urban development of the city, the places of expansion and new urban areas. But a more interesting aspect emerged from the analytical comparison between models. The difference, as the Euclidean distance, between two models gives information about new buildings or demolitions. As considering accuracy it is necessary point out that the quality of final observations from model comparison depends on several aspects such as image quality, image scale and marker accuracy from cartography.
Highlights
Nowadays it is widely acknowledged that artistic and cultural heritage of an urban centre is determined by its elements of greatest interest, the masterpieces, and by the urban texture itself, the smaller building and its changes over time
A topic of great interest is the reconstruction of architectures and lost parts of the city, to provide new views to the visitor and the scholar (Pavlidis et al, 2010)
In many cases the virtual reconstruction is based on verbal descriptions, drawings or depictions, it involves some uncertainty on the reliability of the result obtained
Summary
Nowadays it is widely acknowledged that artistic and cultural heritage of an urban centre is determined by its elements of greatest interest, the masterpieces, and by the urban texture itself, the smaller building and its changes over time. Photogrammetry has always played a key role in the description of the city and its heritage and, after a period of relative disappearance, has returned to being considered a fundamental discipline for the survey and the study of urban centre This revival is due to several aspects, but certainly a key element is the appearance of new software that automate the photogrammetric process, making it more affordable to less specialized people. The meeting with computer vision has encouraged the spread of new digital photogrammetric software that allow to get three-dimensional models mapped with real textures in few steps The automation of these software allows to recover a large part of the existing photographic heritage, from the most recent to the historical one, from terrestrial to aerial ones. From the analysis of different model, some changes in the urban context will be evident and described
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