3D surveying and modelling of complex architectural sites and heritage objects

The actual techniques and methodologies for 3D surveying and modeling allow to achieve very satisfactory and impressive results in the field of documentation, conservation and representation of architectural sites and heritage objects. A great variety of active or passive sensors are available for data acquisition. These data are then processed in order to derive metric 3D information and share them using online databases or GIS tools. But despite the large amount of data, the processing methodologies are still relying very often on manual restitution as automatic method are still not enough reliable for the detailed and precise 3D reconstruction of architectural scenarios and drawings. The articles reports the actual 3D surveying methodologies and data processing techniques with a critical description of open problems and research issues