forum: Discussion: English Heritage publication- 3D Laser Scanning for Heritage (2007)

Paul Bryan recently posted the link to the recently published English Heritage guidance note '3D Laser Scanning for Heritage' and invited forum members to offer their comments.

My own view is that this publication can currently be regarded as the authoritative statement on methods and standards for laser scanning in the heritage sector, and serves not only as an excellent introduction for clients potentially looking to commission scanning work, but also as a demonstration of the capabilities of scanning techniques for people working in the heritage sector themselves.

I think the publication of this document is an excellent point for a 'stock check' of where laser scanning practice currently stands. A few questions I would raise in order to start discussion are:

How widely have the standards established by the work of the Heritage3D project been adhered to? Do practitioners feel that HERs and other data repositories are prepared for receiving point clouds and other large datasets?

How easy have members undertaking laser scanning found it to provide a product that can easily be used by non-specialist clients? How widely are point-cloud datasets and extracted geometries really used by third parties (i.e. users who did not actually undertake the scanning work) and what have been the best examples of this?

How likely is the sea-change that would see the movement towards more widespread use of TLS and LiDAR as a means of 3-dimensional survey?

Graeme