VP-NUM

The issues of documentation and conservation of built heritage have evolved greatly in recent years with the emergence of digital technologies. The processing tools and processes that are now available to researchers potentially modify their work methodology while offering new fields of knowledge and exploitation of information relating to built heritage. As with every transition, fears emerge as to the usefulness, suitability or purpose of digital technologies. Basic research work on the development of appropriate tools and a study of the impact of digital technologies is therefore necessary. The main objective of this research project is to study the potential of transmission of the values carried by the built heritage through its digital representation. The protection, conservation and restoration of a building - or an object of art - depends directly on the values attributed to it and their respective importance. At a time when the extension of the notion of heritage, begun in the 1960s, makes it impossible to apply strict conservation-restoration measures, or even simply to ensure the durability of all the properties to which some of these values are recognized, digital representation can in some cases supplement reality and assume a mission of documentation, or even transmission of the heritage. Although it will never replace the real object, we assume that some of the heritage values of a property could be supported by virtual modelling. We wish, through at least two case studies, to study the relevance of this type of tool as well as the type of representation necessary for the best transmission of the largest possible number of values. Can digital documentation totally or partially replace a building when it comes to perceiving its values? Can it provide sufficiently precise analysis documents to allow its study, even after its transformation or destruction? Can it, in a less radical way, compensate for the prolonged inaccessibility of the building, for example, in the case of long-term works? To serve this main research objective, a tool for analysis and description of the built environment must be developed. The study of a piece of heritage brings together multiple sources and brings together many actors. In order to provide a common working base for the collection of information and for the different actors, we propose to structure the information by spatially locating it on a 3D representation of the building. The tool developed will represent the result (coloured point cloud or textured mesh) of a 3D data collection from a laser scanner, completed with photo-modelling. With the help of a graphical interface, each actor will be able to link and structure thematic information, sources, documents or even directly annotate the model based on observations in the virtual space. This second research objective is essential to the success of the first.