A Heritage Information System Based on Point-Clouds: Research and Intervention Analyses Made Accessible

Heritage buildings can now be surveyed in great detail using geospatial techniques such as photogrammetry and TLS to produce dense point-clouds. For the purposes of research and building analyses, data about interventions and other relevant semantic data from the building are available from many sources, though not always in a well-organized way. Allying semantic data to point-clouds requires the elaboration of an ontology and the segmentation and classification of the point-clouds in accordance with that ontology. The present paper deals with an approach to make semantic classified point-clouds accessible to researchers, heritage managers and members of the public who wish to explore the 3D point-cloud data with ease and without the need for geospatial expertise. The app presented here, ‘HISTERIA’ (Heritage Information System Tool to Enable Research and Intervention Analysis), was developed with MATLAB 2023 App Designer, an object-oriented programming software module. HISTERIA has an interface in which the user can choose which parts of the heritage building s/he wishes to analyze according to several criteria presented in pre-defined queries. The result of most queries is shown in a point-cloud viewer window inside the app. A point can also be selected in the viewer, and all the values attached to it can be accessed in the different classes. HISTERIA is intended to give to the exploration of semantic heritage data in 3D added value in a simplified way.