D-SITE is the first International Conference dealing with the use of drones in the field of Cultural Heritage. It is directed to researchers and experts working for the design of UAVs production and the use of drones for Cultural Heritage digitization finalizing innovative documentation services that integrate and complete the existing practice. In the last few years, the use of UAVs is becoming increasingly important in many areas related to the science of architectural survey, topography, engineering and architecture. Used for monitoring and surveying, drones are an opportunity for the development of increasingly effective systems for the documentation.
The event aims to provide a framework of the State of Art of this phenomenon, laying the foundations for the development of innovative systems of analysis and growth of innovative methodologies with a multidisciplinary nature.

 

The use of UAVs is increasingly widespread in activities related to Heritage documentation. In recent years the development of methodologies of data integration, obtained through surveys that exploit drones to reach privileged observation points, has been witnessed by the numerous computation platforms, software and tools, that populate the exchange. The definition of increasingly reliable methodologies and procedures of close-range photogrammetry has produced considerable results in the survey of Architectural Heritage. Nowadays, several Universities and Research Centers, together with enterprises, are working to optimize documentation services whose goal is, in any case, the representativeness of technical data aimed at the project development.

Parallel to aerial documentation, even the application of remote controlled terrestrial drone systems is renewing the inspection and survey practices in architecture and on territory, overtaking barriers and access dimensions to sites and contexts in emergency otherwise impractical for human operators. Surface rovers and submarine robotics, equipped with controlled cameras and implemented survey devices, in terms of stability and compartment, contribute to complete an extremely scientific and innovative field, where the central theme of robotics applied to Cultural Heritage documentation is expanded and consolidated in correspondence to the international categories of UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicles) and UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicles).

Drones, in the wider terms of their definition, are now used for documentation, management, protection, maintenance, and monitoring, integrating imaging systems or measuring instruments that contribute to define three-dimensional databases on Cultural Heritage. This conference is promoted with the aim of collecting recent experiences on that topic and of providing a moment of reflection between academic and enterprise realities for the promotion of updated frameworks for the development of research in the architectural survey field.

 

The event will consist of three days, 16th-18th June 2022, and it will be organized through training workshops, exhibition-stands of the main companies operating in the field of drone production and connected survey systems that will be able to realize demonstrations and illustrate the latest news in this field. These events will then be joined by interventions describing research activities and documentation projects conducted through the use of drones.

The Conference will be held on 17th and 18th of June, with guest speakers and participants from organizations and national and international research institutes that will describe the specific research activities in the different conference sessions.