Urban heritage monitoring, using image processing techniques and data collection with terrestrial laser scanner (tls), case study cuenca-Ecuador

The role of heritage documentation has proven beneficial for the conservation and management of built heritage. Different tools has supported the recording of buildings, city buildings blocks and sites. However, in most of the heritage sites a lack of systematic methodologies for adequate data analysis has revealed the misusing of heritage documentation. Thus, sites enlisted as World Heritage Sites (WHS) by the UNESCO, are dealing with values that remain at the urban scale, while the documentation activities are focused mainly in buildings.

These situation suits to many sites in developing countries, such as the historic city of Cuenca, at the south of Ecuador. The UNESCO included Cuenca as a WHS in 1999 due to important heritage features. Nevertheless, these heritage values remain at the city level, while the documentation tools and used techniques are focused in individual elements making more difficult the control and management decision-making at the city level. In this context, this research contributes to heritage management; by exploring documentation techniques that provide detailed information and that support heritage analysis at different scales from the urban level, city building blocks and heritage building.

Thereby, the digital aerial photogrammetry, orthomosaics and Model Digital Terrain (MDT) were used to allow the acquisition of an aerial representation of the historic landscape of the city. These data combined with other existing heritage registers, enable the identification and analysis of different valuable elements at different scales. The results has demonstrated that combination of different heritage tools improves heritage conservation with less economic resources.