Automated geo- and timereferencing of historical photographs in the SLUB-Fotothek and photogrammetric generation of a historical 3D city model

Project title

UrbanHistory4D – Multimodal approaches to historic image repositories supporting urban and architectural historical research and communication

Funding

Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)

DESCRIPTION

The junior research group addresses three different issues. The architectural history issues are research and communication about interactions between urban landscape and its depiction, based on a case study of Dresden’s architectural development in the 20^th century. This includes questions about the evolution and transformation of an urban landscape, photographic documentation strategies, and how these shape history. The methodology issues are meeting the research requirements for digital image and map source repositories and developing technical support options for these. This involves naming and systematizing the need for support, such as identifying contextualizing, or visually comparing sources. Another aim is to develop different usage scenarios, for example for communicating architectural history. The information technology issues are needs-based information modelling and its technical applications, based on a case study of the Deutsche Fotothek. This involves aspects of processing and linking historical media and knowledge, including time and place, into a virtual research environment. It also includes researching and developing visualization and information access via a 4D browser and as location-based augmented reality.

The subject of the photogrammetric investigations is the development of an automated workflow for geo and timereferencing of historical photographs provided by the SLUB-Fotothek based on metadata and image characteristics, and furthermore the generation of a photogrammetric 3D city model. The model is evaluated by means of achievable accuracy, model complexity and quality. In a next step methods for feature extraction and pose estimations in an AR-depiction will be provided. Further information is provided on the website of the project http://urbanhistory4d.org/wordpress/.