Investigating the use of 3D laser scanning to detect damaged features in heritage buildings

Abstract

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is becoming increasingly important in the cultural heritage field given the need for virtual records of buildings and detecting surface wear and deterioration. Scientific research has shown that exhaustive 3D modeling from point clouds enables accurate analysis of heritage buildings and sites. However, factors such as the number and location of scanning stations, distance to objects, point of view, and resolution impact the scanning and modeling accuracies. Through the case study of a 19th-century Anglican masonry church in Nottingham (United Kingdom), this chapter investigates the accuracy of TLS surveying features to model surface deficiencies in heritage buildings. The results showed that combining different points of view and distances can enhance accuracy, but the joint accuracy is still lower than that of the less unfavorable station. The research also determined the suitable meshing smoothening for damage modeling and analyzed the point cloud discretization distortion for accuracy analysis.