Scottish Ten

The Scottish Ten is an ambitious five year project to use cutting edge technology to create exceptionally accurate digital models of Scotland’s five UNESCO designated World Heritage Sites and five international ones in order to better conserve and manage them.

History

The Scottish Ten was initiated by then Scottish Government Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, in early 2009, at the Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Documentation conference. The Minister heard Ben Kacyra, father of the laser scanner and CyArk founder, speak passionately about his mission to digitally document the 500 most at risk heritage sites across the world over the next five years. The Minister found inspiration in this project and discussion began as to how Scotland could be involved. The Scottish Ten was formally announced by the Minister at Mount Rushmore National Memorial on 4th July 2009. Over the next four years, the project aims to digitally document Scotland's five UNESCO-inscribed World Heritage Sites and five international heritage sites using cutting-edge laser survey technology. The project marries advanced scientific technologies with heritage conservation on a global scale.

About the Scottish Ten

The primary aims of the Scottish Ten project are to:

• Record important historical sites for the benefit of future generations in Scotland and overseas.
• Share and disseminate Scottish technical expertise and foster international collaboration
• Provide digital media to site managers to better care for the heritage resource
• Recognise international Scottish cultural connections

Led by Historic Scotland – Scotland’s heritage agency – and its partner Glasgow School of Art, under their collaborative venture ‘The Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation LLP’, the Scottish Ten project will create digital documentation of the sites for future development of world class and innovative research, education and management.

The 18th century cotton-manufacturing settlement at New Lanark was the first Scottish site to be scanned and the team have also completed work on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, USA.

How will the sites be chosen?

The five UNESCO World Heritage Sites are being scanned in Scotland. Four of the overseas sites have been selected to fulfil Scottish Government International objectives in North America, Japan, India and China. A fifth site will be selected - details of how you can participate in its selection will be available on this website in the future.

How will the sites be scanned?

Highly precise, high speed terrestrial laser scanning systems, some capable of sub-millimetre data capture and aerial optical remote sensing technology called LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) are being used throughout the sites to quickly measure billions of survey points with unprecedented accuracy. How could the data be used?

Preservation and conservation programmes will benefit because measured dimensions and intensity values generated by the laser scanners allow us to identify problems and understand and quantify any decay of the monuments. Interpretative and education programmes will be enhanced through further modelling of the data to develop unprecedented virtual access to the sites that are restricted or closed to the public.

How will the data be stored?

When the digital models are complete, they will be hosted by CyArk, a non-profit organisation set up to digitally record heritage sites across the globe and provide public access to the information. The project so far

The team have completed scanning the World Heritage site of New Lanark. The first international assignment took the team to South Dakota to scan the faces of the Amercian Presidents on Mount Rushmore National Monument in partnership with Cyark, the National Park Service and local specialists.

Plans for the future

The team are now working to scan all of Scotland’s entries on the UNESCO list including the Antonine Wall, New Lanark (completed), Neolithic Orkney, the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh, the Island of St Kilda plus five other international sites over the next four years.

The first international assignment took place in May 2010 when the team flew out to South Dakota to scan the faces of the American Presidents which are the Mount Rushmore National Monument in partnership with CyArk, the National Park Service and local specialists. Scanning the face of a mountain was quite a challenge and a specialist rope team from the Park Service had to be on hand to assist and keep the team safe.

External links

www.scottishten.org www.historic-scotland.gov.uk www.scotland.gov.uk www.gsa.ac.uk/dds http://cyark.org www.newlanark.org