Enabling understanding and preservation of heritage through digital engagement

Impact: Economic, Commercial Impact, Environmental Impact, Public Policy Impact, Educational Impact (Beyond St Andrews), Cultural, Creative Impact

Description of impact

From 2013 to 2020 we helped promote and preserve cultural and natural heritage through developing, and applying interactive, immersive and mobile digital technologies. The need for this endeavour is underlined by threats to heritage such as fire in the Brazilian National Museum and the impact of COVID 19. Over the same period growing access and improving capabilities amplified the opportunities for using digital to engage with heritage. This case study is about how we contributed to digital preservation and promotion through:
1.creating cultural heritage resource legacy in the form of digital outputs such as reconstructions (58), digital artefacts (370), virtual tours (109), videos (73) and apps (18).
2.empowered museums (30) and their communities in countries (21) to explore and digitally preserve their heritage through workshops and toolkits.
3.enhanced the economy by: working with SMEs (22) creating innovative ways of engaging with heritage, enhancing the tourist experience and creating Smart History Ltd.
4.built the heritage sector’s response to COVID 19, through communicating museum experiences to the home and developing virtual museum infrastructures (44 events).
5. helped policies and strategies that empower communities and agencies in the preservation and promotion of their heritage (EU, Scotland).
This work has applications for end users in leisure, formal education, informal education and tourism. It empowers people to use existing digital literacies to engage with and understand the past. Beneficiaries, include museums, SMEs, local authorities, sectoral agencies, schools and communities. We have trained over 640 professionals and volunteers from over 350 organisations. Our commitment to wider society is further evidenced through the millions of people we have reached through pieces in social and traditional media, including The Guardian, Scotsman, BBC, Google Maps, Facebook and Vimeo.

Who is affected

End Users

Narrative

2. Underpinning research: 1st January 2000 – 31st December 2020 (590/500 words). The goal of this research was to develop workflows, tools and digital infrastructure for emergent 3D and immersive technologies to create virtual interpretations of natural and cultural heritage connected to local communities [R1]. The work draws upon the research in the School of Computer Science, in both systems research and technology supported learning. It draws upon the research of the multidisciplinary Open Virtual Worlds research group. We meet the challenge of creating digital artefacts, narratives and scenes based upon expert evidence and community co-production [R2] and develop appropriate delivery systems to deploy these in communities, museums and schools. This work draws on four research strands: the use of 3D technologies in formal and informal education [R3], system measurement and design [R4], methods for creating and connecting digital content [R2], and delivery platforms [R5] for mobile, at home and on-site access. The initial stages of the research aimed at supporting virtual archaeological fieldwork [R3] (2010/12). An application applied gaming methodologies within an integrated 2D Web / 3D framework. Evaluation of system performance [R4], reconstruction methodology, usability and educational value yielded the key insight that the resource had strong educational value, but that accessibility was limited by network and system requirements (2012/16). This directed efforts towards significant systems analysis and development, including: measurement studies which identified distinct intra-application traffic classes with separate requirements and priorities; system development of combined client side window management and server side rate control of network traffic to improve the accuracy of avatar control and reduce delay whilst being “fair” to external traffic; studies of the relationship between Quality of Experience (QoE) and Quality of Service (QoS) identified performance thresholds [R4], enabling system configuration to optimise QoE; measurement of client, network and server limitations enabled the design of balanced systems. This research underpins our capability to efficiently configure and deploy digital reconstructions that deliver good quality of experience [R5].Interdisciplinary collaborative work addressed developing digital reconstruction of historic scenes, buildings, land and cityscapes (2010/20) [R2]. This required a holistic approach to historic investigation posing research questions not normally addressed and systems issues for supporting exploration within large scale reconstructions. This was “fruitful in providing eminently practical ways of testing theories and assumptions. It is then of the greatest value for conveying more widely the understanding that has been gained.” [R5] This re-enabled the combination of spherical media and mobile platforms for virtual and cross reality exploration of city scale reconstructions (2015/18). Miller and Cassidy developed workflows and methodologies for community co-production of digital artefacts using commodity cameras and phones (2017/19) [R1]. Miller and Rhodes extended support for co-operative development. With Sweetman and Fawcett they pioneered a methodology which integrates software development, scholarship, real world data, 3D modelling and interpretation to create authentic historic 3D scenes (2016/18). Miller, Fabeola and Oliver developed workflows and a software infrastructure to make it easy to create multimodal virtual museums. The virtual museum infrastructure facilitates the reuse of digital content (2017/20) [R6].3. References to the research (indicative maximum of six references)The research is supported by competitive peer-reviewed grants (Horizon 2020, NPS, Innovate UK, EPSRC and SFC) and is published in peer-reviewed conferences and journals sponsored by organisations including: ICOM, IEEE, ACM and Springer. [R1] Digital pathways in community museums. Cassidy, C. A., Fabola, A. E., Miller, A., Weil, K., Urbina, S., Antas, M. & Cummins, A., 26 Dec 2018, In: Museum International. 70, 1-2, p. 126-139. DOI: 10.1111/muse.12198 [R2] Games methodologies and immersive environments for virtual fieldwork. Getchell, K. Miller, A. Nicoll, J., Sweetman, R. & Allison, C. Oct-2010 In: IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies. 3, 4, p. 281-293, DOI: 10.1109/TLT.2010.25 [R3] Virtual worlds, real traffic: interaction and adaptation. Oliver, I., Miller, A. & Allison, C. 2010 MMSys '10: Proceedings of the first annual ACM SIGMM conference on Multimedia Systems. ACM Press, p. 305-316 12 p. DOI: 10.1145/1730836.1730873 [R4] The Virtual Museums of Caen: a case study on modes of representation of digital historical content. McCaffery, J., Miller, A., Vermehren, A. & Fabola, A. 28 Sep 2015 Proceedings of the 2015 Digital Heritage International Congress IEEE, Vol. 2, p. 541-548. DOI: 10.1109/DigitalHeritage.2015.7419571[R5] Exploring canons and cathedrals with Open Virtual Worlds. S. Kennedy, R. Fawcett, A. Miller, L. Dow, R. Sweetman, A Field, A Campbell, I Oliver, J. McCaffery and C. Allison. Proceedings of UNESCO Digital Heritage Congress IEEE Marseille 2013. DOI: 10.1109/DigitalHeritage.2013.6744764[R6] EU-LAC-MUSEUMS Museums and Community: Concepts, Experiences and Sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Report on a Policy Round Table held at the European Commission offices, Brussels, 29 April 2019, Karen Brown, Alan Miller et al. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3368301

Cultural Heritage often made up of valued objects, historic places and cultural traditions. It plays an important role in our understanding of the past, in defining and cohering identity and in communicating with visitors and tourists. Yet our heritage is often fragile and under threat as was underlined by fire in the National Museum of Brazil, floods associated with global warming and the impact of COVID 19.

Development of digital technologies in wider society over the last 20 years have seen a dramatic increase in who has access to them and in their capabilities.  According to the International Telecoms Union (ITU) between 2006 and 2020 the number of mobile broadband subscriptions grew from 4 to 75 subscriptions per hundred people, worldwide. During the same period, following Moore’s Law, the capabilities of commodity computers grew to include 3D simulations, virtual and augmented reality. The combination of threats and opportunities motivates our development and application of digital technologies to the preservation and promotion of heritage in the following ways:

1) creating a cultural heritage resource legacy of playable digital models (58), digital galleries of artefacts (67) and virtual tours (160) of heritage places past and present.

2) working with more than 30 museums and their communities in over 21 countries, to build digital capacity through creating digital assets, holding workshops and developing virtual museum infrastructure.

3) stimulating the economy through encouraging tourism by offering virtual tours, enhancing the museum visitor experience (32 Exhibits), and launching a digital heritage start-up.

4) building the heritage sector’s response to COVID 19 by creating museum at home experiences (14) and online workshops (30) to build the sectors digital capacity.

5) helping develop tools, policies and strategies that empower agencies and communities in the preservation and promotion of heritage.

Impact statusClosed
Impact date1 Aug 201331 Dec 2031
Category of impactEconomic, Commercial Impact, Environmental Impact, Public Policy Impact, Educational Impact (Beyond St Andrews), Cultural, Creative Impact
Impact levelPublic benefitted - end stage

Keywords

  • Community, Heritage, Virtual Reality