Scottish Ten

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Scottish Ten [1] is a government funded five-year project to use cutting edge technology to create exceptionally accurate digital models of Scotland’s five UNESCO designated World Heritage Sites and five international ones in order to better conserve and manage them.

History

The Scottish Ten was initiated by then Scottish Government Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, in early 2009, at the Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Documentation conference. The Minister heard Ben Kacyra, father of the laser scanner and CyArk founder, speak passionately about his mission to digitally document the 500 most at risk heritage sites across the world over the next five years.

The Minister found inspiration in this project and discussion began as to how Scotland could be involved. The Scottish Ten was formally announced by the Minister at Mount Rushmore National Memorial on 4 July 2009.

About the Scottish Ten

The Scottish Ten project states that its primary aims are to:

  • Record important historical sites for the benefit of future generations in Scotland and overseas.
  • Share and disseminate Scottish technical expertise and foster international collaboration
  • Provide digital media to site managers to better care for the heritage resource
  • Recognise international Scottish cultural connections

Led by Historic Scotland – Scotland’s heritage agency – and its partner Glasgow School of Art, under their collaborative venture ‘The Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation LLP’, the Scottish Ten project states it will create digital documentation of the sites for future development of world class and innovative research, education and management.

The 18th century cotton-manufacturing settlement at New Lanark was the first Scottish site to be scanned. Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, USA was scanned in August 2009.

How do the sites get chosen?

The project states that the five UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Scotland are being scanned. Four of the overseas sites have been selected to fulfil Scottish Government International objectives in North America, Japan, India and China. A fifth site will be selected at a later date.

How will the sites be scanned?

The project will be using highly precise, high speed terrestrial laser scanning systems, some capable of sub-millimetre data capture and aerial optical remote sensing technology called LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging).

How will the data be stored?

When the digital models are complete, they will be hosted by CyArk, a non-profit organisation set up to digitally record heritage sites across the globe and provide public access to the information.

The project so far

The team have completed scanning the World Heritage site of New Lanark. The first international assignment took the team to South Dakota to scan the faces of the American Presidents on Mount Rushmore National Monument in partnership with Cyark, the National Park Service and local specialists.

The Scottish Ten team are now working to scan all of Scotland’s entries on the UNESCO list including the Antonine Wall, New Lanark (completed), Neolithic Orkney, the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, the Island of St Kilda plus five other international sites over the next four years.

References

  1. ↑ "the official Scottish Ten website". historic-scotland.gov.uk. 2010-08-23. Retrieved 2010-10-01. 

External links

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