DOCUMENTING THE CULTURAL HERITAGE ROUTES. THE CREATION OF INFORMATIVE MODELS OF HISTORICAL RUSSIAN CHURCHES ON UPPER KAMA REGION

Abstract

The present paper illustrates the documentation activities developed since 2013 on Upper Kama territories, preliminary to an extensive and joint research action within the European project “PROMETHEUS” (2019–2021), which aims to produce digitized databases and models for the management of the main religious monuments present on this Russian area, nowadays endangered by risk of conservation. The project is funded by the EU program Horizon 2020 – R&I – RISE – Research & Innovation Staff Exchange Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and it is aimed at the definition of inter-sectoral collaboration protocols for the development and promotion of a new methodology for the development of reliable 3D databases and models of monumental complexes in Upper Kama region. The project, that involves the collaboration between three Universities (University of Pavia, Italy, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, Perm National Research Polytechnic University, Russia) and two enterprises (EBIME, Spain, SISMA, Italy), aims to promote actions to develop interdisciplinary activities for the documentation, management and production of collaborative H-BIM models, for the start-up of monitoring and development activities on this specific Cultural Heritage. Researches and initiatives conducted in the previous years on Upper Kama territory highlight potentialities and opportunities of digital survey to define a basis of knowledge that is both scientific and technical, for future interventions on endangered architectural heritage, where academies, companies and administrations promote actions to develop interdisciplinary documentation activities through collaborative management H-BIM models and an intervention protocol on Cultural Heritage.

Full text

DOCUMENTING THE CULTURAL HERITAGE ROUTES.
THE CREATION OF INFORMATIVE MODELS OF HISTORICAL RUSSIAN
CHURCHES ON UPPER KAMA REGION
S. Parrinello 1, F. Picchio 1, R. De Marco 1, A. Dell’Amico 1*
1 DICAr, Dept. of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy - sandro.parrinello@unipv.it,
francesca.picchio@unipv.it, raffaella.demarco@unipv.it, anna.dellamico@gmail.com
Commission II, WG II/8
KEY WORDS: H2020 RISE, Cultural Heritage Routes, Digital Documentation, Information Models Library, Laser scanner survey,
aerial photogrammetry, Upper Kama Region.
ABSTRACT:
The present paper illustrates the documentation activities developed since 2013 on Upper Kama territories, preliminary to an
extensive and joint research action within the European project “PROMETHEUS” (2019-2021), which aims to produce digitized
databases and models for the management of the main religious monuments present on this Russian area, nowadays endangered by
risk of conservation. The project is funded by the EU program Horizon 2020 - R&I - RISE - Research & Innovation Staff Exchange
Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and it is aimed at the definition of inter-sectoral collaboration protocols for the development and
promotion of a new methodology for the development of reliable 3D databases and models of monumental complexes in Upper
Kama region. The project, that involves the collaboration between three Universities (University of Pavia, Italy, Polytechnic
University of Valencia, Spain, Perm National Research Polytechnic University, Russia) and two enterprises (EBIME, Spain, SISMA,
Italy), aims to promote actions to develop interdisciplinary activities for the documentation, management and production of
collaborative H-BIM models, for the start-up of monitoring and development activities on this specific Cultural Heritage. Researches
and initiatives conducted in the previous years on Upper Kama territory highlight potentialities and opportunities of digital survey to
define a basis of knowledge that is both scientific and technical, for future interventions on endangered architectural heritage, where
academies, companies and administrations promote actions to develop interdisciplinary documentation activities through
collaborative management H-BIM models and an intervention protocol on Cultural Heritage.
* Corresponding author
1. INTRODUCTION
The fires and invasions of all preceding epochs were no more
destructive for our monuments of antiquity than the indifference
to our native past that reigned during the past two centuries.
(Boris von Eding, 1913)
Analysing the documentative production, in a specific historical
period and in a specific territory, concerning its historical
architectural heritage, it is possible to understand the socio-
cultural attitudes related to its conservation and promotion.
Such behavioural attitudes, both of a single individual or a
society, have conditioned not only the image and the identity of
the architectural system and of the landscape that hosts it, but
they also have determined practices and activities that condition
the mechanisms of protection of the heritage (Jokilehto, 1998).
This analysis has to be developed in the aim of working with
methodologies and cognitive practices experimented on a
specific context, in territories where, instead, these procedures
are not consolidated. Regarding the aspects of documentation
for the restoration and preservation of historical architecture,
the consolidated experiences in the Mediterranean and
European context are raising and increasing an international
awareness that focuses on the importance, even economic, of
this safeguarding of historical identity and of the connected
image of the entire landscape and cultural systems. The
attention that these safeguard methodologies for heritage are
receiving within the most recent EU programs has initiated, in
recent years, an awareness-raising process extended to the
recognition of heritage for its protection (Feilden, Jokilehto,
1998), supported and expanded in a phenomenon of public and
territorial involvement (Byrne, 2008) that configures as a
worldwide example (Logan, 2001). However, the goal of
standardizing awareness programs highlights a difficulty in the
uniformity of methods and languages (Langfield et al., 2010).
The variety of characters of Cultural Heritage (Logan, 2012), in
particular the Built Heritage, denies the provision of a “static”
method of knowledge, where absolute and invariable parameters
applied to each context should instead be oriented towards a
“dynamic” documentation and intervention protocols (Kioussi
et al., 2013). Therefore, the indexing of archives, and the
possibility of interconnecting metadata and databases among
them, moves the general orientation of these systems towards a
structuring of the same archives and of systematized data
through methodological phases and products (drawings, models
and more elaborated out-puts of critic synthesis and
interpretation). Through the infinite variety of such products
and interpretations, systems must be placed in order to support
and interpret the reading of these both technical-operational and
cultural specificities, from whose analyses they derive
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W15-887-2019 | © Authors 2019. CC BY 4.0 License.
887

intervention and implementation practices that can relate the
past, the present and the future, about the life of a specific
cultural system or an architectural element that refers to it. The
goal is to systemize a proposal for an internationally shared
method, from which to develop a management program for
Cultural Heritage, capable of adapting ad hoc to different
contexts and scales from the monument to the territory,
particularly in regions where heritage awareness has only
recently become a socio-cultural topic in development (Kioussi
et al., 2011). The definitions and regulations promoted by the
European committees, in the classification of material and
immaterial values of the heritage on indexes and parameters of
evaluation, now surpass today's international geo-political
boundaries, recognizing common forms and characteristics that
bring together people and traditions around original cultural
areas, today administratively secondary but still influential in
contemporary communities.
The case of the European geographical basin is witnessing a
secular cultural extension towards close continents, in particular
the Asian one, and, at the same time, it performs a resilience in
maintaining the architectural features of Western culture in
exemplary contexts. The “European Russia”, whose
architectural values are strongly permeated by West models,
represents an exemplary case of this phenomenon.
In these border territories, as those places where imported
cultural events take place and which have acquired their own
identity, characterization and specificity over time, it is the path
of these cultural models to define a greater enrichment of
identity, even more than the monument itself.
This richness is therefore expressed into “Cultural Heritage
Routes” which, understood and qualified, can describe terms of
cultural connections that are set on basins of intercontinental
extensions.
Models like those of the Orthodox churches come from the
Middle East into the Mediterranean basin, and they cross
Europe vertically from Greece to reach the Urals, where they
meet with other models that from the Middle Eastern basin have
climbed the great rivers such as the Volga or with models that
have crossed the Gobi steppes.
In these border places, Cultural Routes determine, even in a
material way, the presence of monuments in the area. The river
is in the Russian taiga the way to cross and penetrate the
territory acquiring its values. It is with the river that cultures
and models of civilization are transported. Today, in these
territories, an administrative landscape, in the absence of
conscious activities aimed at preserving built heritage, has led
to phenomena of neglect and abandonment and to the loss of a
wide Cultural Heritage. This aspect is partly due to the
devastating assault policies that the Soviet regime has applied to
historical monuments over the past century (Abeti, 2018). In
this way, this aspect contributes to express the difficult survival
of a collective material memory, that is instead central
expression of flows of communities and cultures across Europe.
Since 2013, DAda-LAB Laboratory of University of Pavia has
developed multiple research guidelines on the enhancement and
conservation of Cultural Heritage in the border territories of
European Russia, within cognitive actions of analysis and
Figure 1. The Church of the Annunciation in Pokcha: a
comparison between an historical photo and the point cloud
from the survey of 2018 summer school.
Figure 2. The territory of Upper Kama and its districts (Cherdyn, Usolye, Solikamsk). Some examples of types of churches and
monumental sites found in the Cherdyn district.
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
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888

digital documentation of monumental churches and traditional
wooden settlements. Within the collaboration with Perm
National Research Polytechnic University, the research
activities conducted in Upper Kama have established a double
channel of sharing and scientific comparison between Italy and
Russia, focused on the investigation of the monumental
architectural sites distributed along Kama and Kolva. The
widespread nature of this heritage, at the center of the itineraries
organized during Summer School experiences (2015-2018) and
with the participation of researchers and students from different
universities and international institutes, has provided for the
application of digitalization and architectural survey methods
that have highlighted the importance of drawing and graphic
product in the description and census of monumental units and
of the surrounding landscape. In the same way, it has been
highlighted how the critical drawing, both 2D and 3D, defines
not only a documentative contribution but a starting cognitive
support, on which to dispose and integrate necessary
multidisciplinary contents that can range on the entirety of
Cultural Heritage knowledge, also in a technological, planning
and administrative nature.
These considerations have encouraged, both methodologically
and contextually, the structuring of a broader project idea,
aimed at defining inter-sectoral collaboration protocols for the
development and promotion of reliable 3D Information Models
Libraries on architectural heritage. The objective, starting from
the experimentation of Upper Kama, is to establish a dynamic
methodological protocol that can be replicated in Europe,
developing an active but standardized approach to the “digitized
planning” of Cultural Heritage Routes.
2. UPPER KAMA TERRITORY AND HERITAGE
The territory of Upper Kama is witnessed of the specific
historical-political actions and of their effects on the built
heritage. The monumental historical architectures, both
religious and civil, coexist in the territory in a widespread way,
distributed along the Kama river valley and endangered by
different critical issues, both anthropogenic and natural. This
phenomenon collects a heterogeneity of architectural elements,
with stylistic and constructive varieties, and a multiplicity of
building materials and related pathologies of decay and
conservation, defining an unique panorama for its specific
conformation and, at the same time, an international recognition
of the widespread cultural problem.
The Upper Kama region is located north of Perm Krai, with a
territorial extension of about 7.000 kmq, limited to the west by
the chain of Ural Mountains, and to the north by the Komi
region. The territorial richness is defined by the presence of
mineral resources that have given the region the role of
commercial crossroad throughout the Imperial period, realizing
during the 15th century a cultural and architectural development
promoted by merchant families, such as Stroganov or Golitsyns.
The initiatives of the merchant class have contributed to the
development of complex urban settlements, including in
addition to the industrial center also residential buildings and
Orthodox complexes, churches, bell towers and family chapels
(Brumfield, 2008). The salt trade, from Europe beyond Urals to
China, has increased trade flows and intermediate settlements
along this route, centred around the main districts of Solikamsk
(1430), Cherdyn (1535) and Usolye (1606) (Parrinello, Cioli,
2018).
The 19th century, after the revolution of 1917, was marked by a
strong political split, and the new industrial configuration has
influenced the territory and the Russian society and it has also
profoundly modified the distinction between rural and urban
environment, marking a change in the approach to the building
and its image in the landscape. A new social structure that
redesigns the structure of territory, influencing the
redistribution of properties and the conservative management of
connected monuments. In this way, most of the historical
architectural complexes of the Kama valley have seen their
transformation into ruins, today as survivors of a past era but in
a difficult way of intervention and insertion in the territorial
context, in a constant decline under the weight of snow and of
the atmospheric agents on their ruins (Brumfield, 1995).
Upper Kama region is still today composed of more than 50
monumental sites, spread over the territory but interconnected
by a single cultural language, distinguishable as an historical-
materic link, but where management planning aimed at
protecting these assets is absent. The attention still reserved by
the local population to the image of these historic monumental
landscapes is difficultly matches restoration and management
initiatives by administrations, contrasted by the critical nature of
conservative intervention and by the lack of adequate bases of
metrical and architectural documentation of Orthodox churches.
Through the comparative study of sites, the stylistic coherence
in unitary forms and themes is evident, as expression of an
actual historical-stylistic identity. Looking to the main sites, it is
possible to find a colonial influence, whose forms find order in
the importation of the European style (first Baroque and then
Neoclassical) influenced by the local cultural models of
vernacular style. Thus, architectural reference models, first
applied in urban contexts within the “palace” model, are moved
inside villages, influencing the construction of buildings with
monumental forms and rich geometries as expression of the
political and economic development of these settlements.
Figure 3. The Tserkov church (Solikamsk) an example of
the use of the “zjuchkoviy” (Ж - Жучковый орнамент).
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
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889

Each district can be identified by a nucleus with a religious
structure that becomes a symbol and orientation point around
the monumental building. The church identifies the village, in a
correspondence of sign-society where the monument itself is the
fulcrum of cultural aggregation and it becomes a symbol of
community, village, home (Mumford, 1963).
The large brick volumes dominate the entire village, with their
different proportions compared to the small wooden doma that
rise along the streets, and the Orthodox tradition contributes to
define architectural canons translated into typological characters
of unification of the image of churches: the cross nave system
with two main aisles, with a cuboid development culminating in
the semi-cylindrical apse; the central module turned into pillars;
the complex coverage schemes, enriched by subsidiary domes.
The external surfaces are drawn according to rigid geometric
patterns, through an alternation of full and empty spaces that
not always corresponds to the layout of the internal structure of
the church. The facades are intended as scenes that dialogue
with the landscape while the interiors are reduced to protect
from the cold (Brumfield, 1993). The same building materials
direct the identity of the place, such as settlement nucleus built
on river clayey soil: the brick becomes the privileged material,
alongside the traditional wooden architecture for civil
constructions. The application of geometric decorations in brick
is found in the traditional “zjuchkoviy” motifs, projected on the
external surfaces of churches.
3. MANAGEMENT AND INTERVENTION PROTOCOL
FOR UPPER KAMA CULTURAL HERITAGE
Moving from the cities of Usolye and Solikamsk, configured as
emerging urban centers of the area and better preserved in their
historical and architectural heritage, the traditional landscape of
villages, located between the forest and the river, shows a
settlement dispersion in the territory that is at the same time
cause and effect of the lack of local monitoring and
management practices. From the hills of Pyskor, to the district
of Cherdyn, towards the northern sites of Bondjug, Kamgort,
Iskor and Nyrob, the presence of an implicit cultural route
connects the architectural dialogue between churches and
monuments along the Kama. Churches, visible in the elevation
of their domes and bell towers, define a cultural path of value
and immersion in the disappearing historical heritage.
Thus, the documentation of the image of place and its
monuments, framed in their current condition, becomes an
objective of territorial monitoring of the evolutionary processes
that involves culture and local identities, and it defines a path of
initiative and evolution for the development of adequate
maintenance and management plans.
The complexity of relationships that qualifies the structure of
the identity of place, consisting of the monument and its
relationship with the landscape of Kama, attempts to be
transposed into a new “virtual” conformation. In this way, the
act of digitization becomes a methodological input associated to
a deeper cognitive process, with the decomposition and critical
reconstruction of the architectural unity through a semantic
classification of its sub-components. The objective is to
consolidate an architectural, digital and three-dimensional
model, as a result of content and form on the current and future
status of the monument.
The research intends to develop a documentation protocol for
Upper Kama through the definition of an archive of libraries of
architectural models surveyed in the territory, for the
digitization, archiving and management of monumental
complexes, with the possibility of developing reuse and
interaction processes of data through collaborative management
and implementation processes. The research and documentation
of historical constructive units unifies the languages of
architectural representation, pursuing methodological
procedures of coding and processing for geometric and
parametric virtual models of complexes, based on principles of
transparency, communicability and repeatability of methods and
results by researchers to users, both administrative-operational
and public-fruitive.
Starting from the previous research lines developed over years,
the aim of the European project PROMETHEUS is to
implement an interdisciplinary action for the documentation and
structuring of information on architectural heritage, promoting
the training of researchers on the constructive and historical
value of Cultural Heritage Routes. The definition of a “Charta”,
for the repeatability of the action, will be pursued with a
practical action on the monuments present along Upper Kama
Figure 4. Methodological and action framework of H2020 RISE project PROMETHEUS.
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W15-887-2019 | © Authors 2019. CC BY 4.0 License.
890

route (Russia) as pilot study case, aware of the methodological
and operational dynamism necessary for the extension in the
repertoire of European routes.
The network of scientific sectors involved in the action, ranging
from the technological field to the practice of territorial
planning, favours the cultural and thematic enlargement
necessary to develop the skills required by administrations and
management committees. The competences in the digital survey
of architectural heritage, at the base of the starting process for
Information Models Libraries, recall the development of
integrated databases on architectural heritage survey, that
inevitably pass through the requirement of certification and
structuring of the acquired data, in terms of both reliabilities to
the “real” configuration of conservation and architectural status
and in terms of completeness and management of
documentation data. In particular, the metric component is
confirmed as primary information, even if not exhaustive,
required to start the architectural analysis approach. It is applied
to define the documentary base to which the complete database
of data refers, upgraded of materic, historical and landscape
features, necessary for the global understanding of the built site,
in terms of architectural components and their diagnosis.
The optimization of these databases and material-morphological
models is followed by the implementation of knowledge on
construction technologies and census archives related to
architecture, together with historical and territorial planning
practices. This is followed by a “scaled” modelling procedure,
where the predisposition of Architectural Building Families, as
classes of hierarchical components from the survey of churches
and implemented with information contents, allows to proceed
with a semantic drawing of the built heritage through a
modelling strategy by over-classes. This procedure starts with
the definition of Typological Constructive Modules that
compose the structural system, to then compose the
architectural complex and the surrounding landscape through a
parameterization of geometric components that, at different
levels of detail and of iconographic synthesis, identify flows and
values of services, connections, sites and territory.
From the architectural knowledge, it derives a comparison with
the operational practice, allowing a dialogue with the
professional companies that operate in the project intervention
of restoration and management of BIM systems and
methodologies to develop procedures and actions for the
implementation of databases and academic models. Precisely in
the flows of technological, historical and formal
correspondence, the territorial model responds to administrative
and managerial requests, offering the information content to an
interactive reading for multiple in-depth channels, and allowing
the architectural shape to change its digital expression
depending on the degree of requested information. The
Collaborative Model, once structured, configures a new form of
shared database, where the search result becomes the starting
point for the life of the building after the survey project, during
restoration and maintenance, powering the implementation of a
new use of heritage.
Figure 5. One of the aims of PROMETHEUS project is the
creation of interactive maps to which information about
religious monumental complexes can be associated.
Figure 6. Point cloud views and drawings with analysis of
the decay of the Church of Annunciation.
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W15-887-2019 | © Authors 2019. CC BY 4.0 License.
891

4. FROM THE 3D DATABASE TO THE TERRITORIAL
MODEL: STRATEGIES OF DEVELOPMENT AND
CONSTRUCTION
The research and experimentation activities conducted since
2015 have allowed to test and optimize the digital
documentation procedures towards the standardization of a
survey method for Upper Kama, proportioned and evaluated on
the specific realities of architectural complexes, preserved,
abandoned or ruins. Compared to the experiences of 2015 and
2016, the campaign conducted in 2018 has expressed a greater
awareness and commitment in the evaluation of correspondence
processes between survey databases and information modelling
systems, designed on the territorial scale.
The research has concerned the strategy of testing integrated
digital survey methods, both terrestrial and aerial (Parrinello,
Picchio, 2014), aimed at defining methodological protocols for
the development of reliable 3D models and new operational
programs. In these terms, the adoption of a metric surveying
methodology implemented with Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS)
instrumentation presents itself as a strategy capable of providing
an adequate dimensional basis for the structuring and
certification of the metric database and of the supplementary
photographic, critical and census data, acquirable on
architectural and territorial components. The strategy of
integration of Lidar and photographic instrumentation, of
terrestrial type with static application (Terrestrial Laser Scanner,
Camera Reflex for close-range photogrammetry) and dynamic
acquisition (Mobile Stencil, Ricoh Camera) and of aerial type
(DJI drones for SfM photogrammetry and for photographic
investigation), is applied ensuring a total coverage of the
context and it is conducted at multiple levels of observation and
stratification of the built system, territorial, architectural and
constructive (Parrinello, Dell’Amico, 2018). The laser scanner
acquisition has defined the reliable geometry of building
complexes, adopting a photogrammetric drone Structure from
Motion reconstruction for roofs and upper portions of facades,
till to reach the surveying of landscape. Photographic census is
also considered in the objectives of implementation for the
knowledge of sites, with 2D panorama and spherical products
able to complete the geometric data with materic and
multimedia contents.
The results of this methodological structure conduct to a library
of global georeferenced Digital Databases, as sparse models,
fully conceived as colorimetric models of monuments and their
landscape context, metrically reliable and highly descriptive, to
implement information contents through the correspondence
between points or mesh surfaces and graphic-informative
elaborations.
The methodological choice is made with the awareness of fast-
operability and adaptability required to digital survey, to decline
to the many spatial and morphological configurations of the
wide historical-architectural catalogue of Upper Kama sites.
Particularly, their complexity is due to the stylistic variety (from
Baroque Stroganov to the Twentieth Century restorations) and
architectural distribution, found within blocks, environments
and apparatuses belonging to the built complexes diffused on
territory. Therefore, survey operations provide a primary
structure of data integration processes, comparing real objects
and virtual models for the implementation of analysis.
More advanced digital models can produce a global
architectural digitizing action, framing objects in spatial
modules, structuring the analyzed features and transforming the
output of instruments into optimized 3D databases, responding
to dynamic and standard requirements of European regulations.
Data collected on site, through the different instruments, explain
a superabundance of information that, if not elaborated and
discharged, loses its communicative function. The set of data
and information, as to become a communication tool for
different users, must find the right means of explanation.
Drawings, symbols, geometries, images, sounds and multimedia
elements have their own peculiarities and equal informational
dignity if justified by a specific purpose.
The normalization of integrated informative/cognitive models
requires a multidisciplinary approach, which considers the
peculiarities and requirements of potential users. In fact, the
creation of digital Information Models, structured on the
geometric representation of architecture, can connect more
information, derived from diagnostic tests and analysis of the
materials coming from different supports. Therefore,
Information Models can create a single organic system of
management and sharing for implementation.
Order, completeness and implementation of data define the
basis of BIM methodology. The models can be defined at
different detail scales according to the descriptive requirements
(Pavan et al., 2017). From a territorial synthesis model, as
descriptor of the parameters that characterize territory (services,
means of transport, activities, monuments) to a detailed model
describing the decorative and technological parameters aimed at
the conservation and management of the same monument.
Figure 7. First considerations made on the construction of
a simplified informative model of the territory. The
simplified three-dimensional geometric forms define and
describe the characteristics of the territory through the
insertion of specific parameters. Each simplified model of
church is expected to connect a more detailed model that
describes the different technological elements in detail.
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W15-887-2019 | © Authors 2019. CC BY 4.0 License.
892

The elaboration of models that describe and manage territory
into collaborative platforms, as offered by BIM platforms, can
allow different categories of operators to work and manage data
in different contexts, monitoring and planning specific actions
or widespread interventions (Osello, Ugliotti, 2017). This
service represents an opportunity to develop the methodological
protocol and its application on Built Heritage, even after the
project, keeping researchers connected and operative to extend
the requirements of knowledge, control, management and site
planning.
5. CONCLUSIONS
Cultural Heritage Routes, although diversified by type, territory
of location and by the involving urbanization processes, have
common architectural and landscape features if they refer to
classification processes. The semantic levels in which these
characters can be decomposed are able to define typological
“libraries” of architectural and construction components,
developed with analysis languages and coding common systems
to the global community. The identification and definition of
their characteristics is a fundamental action for the digitization
of these cultural contexts, as both historical and natural
landscapes, architectural monuments and archaeological sites.
Within the process of codification and digitization by elements,
the proposal of unified documentation protocols and digital
information models on a variety of diversified cultural contexts
is realized, promoting a territorial digitization action from the
architectural system to the territorial one.
The collaborative action that PROMETHEUS attempts to
promote is the synergy between academic partners and
companies that, having already worked independently on
typologically and geographically similar contexts, have acquired
the experience necessary to start the operational processes set
by the project, and that for the first time collaborate to share a
joint and methodologically repeatable process. Documentation
and management protocols, no longer fragmented but extended
to entire cultural areas, will allow to validate the collaboration
between partners, the obtained outputs and to optimize the
method according to context, new technologies and an update
of the relative application to cultural routes. In this way, the
results of PROMETHEUS will support the recognition and
establishment of “protected” areas, architectural and landscape
complexes within these routes, contributing to the development
and progress of architectural and cultural conservation within
the European and worldwide heritage.
The project, which attempts to create a dialogue on heritage
using the common language of “drawing”, assumes
collaborative platforms and interdisciplinarity between the
partners to provide digital archives, able to contain information
about landscape and architecture as containers for the aspects
that have characterized Upper Kama landscape, which in its
signs stratifies and sediments the traces of history.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The documentation of Upper Kama Region is part of a wider
program of activities carried out, since 2013, by DAda-LAB -
University of Pavia (coordinator prof. S. Parrinello) and Perm
National Research Polytechnic University (coordinator prof. S.
Maximova). Three summer schools were organized in 2015,
2016, 2018, involving professors, researchers and students of
different Universities (Pavia, Florence, Perm, St. Petersburg,
Samara and Cairo). The research was supported by the
contribution of the Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and
Architecture, the Stroganov Chambers Historic Architectural
Museum of Usolye and the administration of Usolye. Part of the
graphic elaborates of the contribution were developed inside the
course of “Architectural survey & restoration” (prof. S.
Parrinello, prof. G. Minutoli) of the Double Degree Italian
Chinese course in Building Engineering and Architecture of
University of Pavia.
The theme of the documentation of traditional Nordic wooden
architecture, treated in the context of digital surveying and
territorial census, was the subject of the European project FP7-
PEOPLE-2010-IRSES “WOODEN ARCHITECTURE”,
developed by University of Pavia, University of Florence (Italy)
and University of Oulu (Finland).
PROMETHEUS project is funded by the EU program Horizon
2020-R&I-RISE-Research & Innovation Staff Exchange Marie
Skłodowska-Curie. It sees the collaboration between three
Universities (University of Pavia, Italy, Polytechnic University
of Valencia, Spain, Perm National Research Polytechnic
University Perm National Polytechnic University Research,
Russia) and two companies (EBIME, Spain, SISMA, Italy).
This project has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the
Figure 8. Complexity of parameters and links between information system and architectural complexity. The different levels of
graphic interaction and implementation conduct to deeper levels of knowledge and morphological detail of churches.
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W15-887-2019 | © Authors 2019. CC BY 4.0 License.
893

Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 821870.
The editorial responsibility of the paragraphs is recognized to:
S. Parrinello for paragraphs 1 and 5, F. Picchio for paragraph 2,
R. De Marco for paragraph 3, A. Dell’Amico for paragraph 4.
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The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-2/W15, 2019
27th CIPA International Symposium “Documenting the past for a better future”, 1–5 September 2019, Ávila, Spain
This contribution has been peer-reviewed.
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLII-2-W15-887-2019 | © Authors 2019. CC BY 4.0 License.
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