Diachronic studies play a key role in the research and documentation of cultural heritage and its changes, ranging from architectural fragments to landscape. Regarding the reconstructions of lost cultural heritage sites, the determination of landscape conditions in the reconstructed era goes frequently unheeded. Often, only ruins and detached archeological artefacts remain of the built heritage. Placing them correctly within the reconstructed building complex is of similar importance as placing the lost monument in the context of the landscape at that time. The proposed method harmonizes highly heterogeneous sources to provide such a context. The solution includes the fusion of referential terrain models of different levels of detail (LODs) as well as the fusion of diverse 3D data sources for the reconstruction of the built heritage. Although the combined modeling of large landscapes and small 3D objects of a high detail results in very large datasets, we present a feasible solution, whose data structure is suitable for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses of landscapes and also provides a smooth and clear 3D visualization and inspection of detailed features. The results are demonstrated in the case study of the island monastery, the vanished medieval town of Sekanka, and the surrounding landscape, which is located in Czechia and was the subject of intensive changes over time.

Virtual globes are technologies for visual navigation through a three-dimensional, multi-resolution model of the entire planet. Data representations used in virtual globes, however, lack geometric flexibility at high-resolution levels of the planet-wide terrain surface. This is a problem especially if boundaries between individual geospatial features and the terrain are important. A novel integration of individual polygonal boundaries with a specific multi-resolution representation of the planet-wide terrain is developed in this article. In the preparation stage, the integration relies on an original simplification algorithm applied to the polygonal boundaries between geospatial features and the terrain. Its output is a multiple level-of-detail (LOD) geometry, which can be combined with a known multi-LOD representation of the terrain that uses run-time triangulation. This data representation is suitable for storage in existing database systems, avoids any data redundancy across LODs, and is even independent of the subdivision schema that partitions the planet's surface for the sake of dealing with LODs. At run-time, a novel reconstruction algorithm stitches geometric parts from different LODs together in a manner that augments the multi-LOD representation of the terrain. Within a certain proximity range from a given position, the method reconstructs a scene that preserves topological relations between the boundaries of geospatial features with the terrain. The method also guarantees that certain nearest proximity to the given position consists of the best geometries that correspond to the original datasets. Such properties of the method close up the gap between a mere exploratory visualization of static, pre-generated models and the models supporting geospatial analysis, which is deemed crucial for applications in Geographic Information Systems, Building Information Modelling and other software industries. A prototype implementation and experiment results that prove this method are also presented.

?l?nek p?edstavuje ?e?en? a v?sledky projektu „D?dictv? zanikl?ch krajin: identifikace, rekonstrukce, zp??stupn?n?,“ zpracov?van?ho v?letech 2018–2022 v r?mci programu NAKI II Ministerstva kultury ?esk? republiky. C?lem proje... ?l?nek p?edstavuje ?e?en? a v?sledky projektu „D?dictv? zanikl?ch krajin: identifikace, rekonstrukce, zp??stupn?n?,“ zpracov?van?ho v?letech 2018–2022 v r?mci programu NAKI II Ministerstva kultury ?esk? republiky. C?lem proje...

The advancements in geospatial web technology triggered efforts for disclosure of valuable resources of historical collections. This paper focuses on the role of spatial data infrastructures (SDI) in such efforts. The work describes the interplay between SDI technologies and potential use cases in libraries such as cartographic heritage. The metadata model is introduced to link up the sources from these two distinct fields. To enhance the data search capabilities, the work focuses on the representation of the content-based metadata of raster images, which is the crucial prerequisite to target the search in a more effective way. The architecture of the prototype system for automatic raster data processing, storage, analysis and distribution is introduced. The architecture responds to the characteristics of input datasets, namely to the continuous flow of very large raster data and related metadata. Proposed solutions are illustrated on the case study of cartometric analysis of digitised early maps and related metadata encoding.

This paper proposes a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) module for management of a continuous flow of geospatial images and related metadata. Continuously acquired map scans from the digitalization process of an old maps collection or the satellite imagery retrieved through a receiving station are examples of such data flows. Storage of the raster data in a database is a key feature of the system, which enhances the usual tasks and usability of SDI systems. The analytical procedures deployed within the data store perform automated raster analysis and content-based metadata extraction. This functionality is illustrated with two experiments – improving the display of early map scans and snow and cloud detection from satellite images. Applications of the proposed approach and utilization of the prototype application by geographers and cartographers are discussed.