Monitoring World Heritage Sites with Web Cameras
Ref.: 198
Área temática:
03 Integridad visual de los paisajes urbanos históricos
Fecha de recepción:
14/11/2008
AUTORES (* Autor principal)
BASSA, Lia
* (Hungría)
-
Foundation for Information Society Infota Research Institute Budapest
ABSTRACT
Our basic aim is to provide a technical methodology in order to meet the requirements set up in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention's
Operational Guidelines concerning monitoring and as a next step Periodic Reporting.
In accordance with the Convention, any
unauthorised changes and modification of WH sites can take place without providing information to the WHC. It is the obligation of the
State Parties to assure it by the assistance of the site owners and managers. In order to implement it, a research project is being carried
out in the WH site of Budapest: we are installing web cameras that regularly (now twice a day, later twice a week) take pictures of the
observed areas. It means that we will have objective evidence of the state of conservation of the site. It is the obligation of the State Parties
that they maintain a permanent monitoring continuous preservation. By the regular taking of photos, the site manager gets immediate
information about any change, deterioration, damage of any building or of the environment. The recording, thus official documentation of
the change can also have a regulation effect on the reconstructions.
The technical aim is to have a low-cost monitoring tool with
reasonable operational costs and undemanding maintenance that is easily accessible anywhere in the world using modern communication
technology which is automated to a great extent.
In the research phase the webcams are fixed on the buildings and they record
any changes with regular taking of photos. This allows the inclusions of other sources like public web cameras as well as own cameras.
They could be used for other reasons as well, e.g. a bank or ministry could decide to include an automatically updated picture on their
website. Nevertheless, in the same time, it could be used for permanent surveillance both for safety and conservation reasons.
The communication can be made by landlines or radio frequency; Energy is provided by batteries, lines or solar energy. Picture
processing is done based on change detection of arising differences and the data collected can be exclusively selected based on UNESCO
Operational Guidelines directives filtering non desired changes (weather, light).
The features of capturing can meet requirements of
different purposes: depending on temporal, spatial, in depth details and frequencies. Results obtained
There is also an important legal
feature to be considered: the method is unable to identify persons and personal details but is suitable for recognising harms and
destructions or failures in a building or an environment.
BIBLIOGRAFÍA
1. http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-
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2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpieces_of_the_Oral_and_Intangible
_Heritage_of_Humanity
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l
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m
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