Beijing: More than 120 Great Wall protection projects make cultural heritage shine in the era
2024-08-10
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Apply technologies such as real-time remote monitoring and high-precision 3D modeling
Digital technology empowers the protection of the Great Wall (Big Data Observation)
Core Reading
The Great Wall is a representative symbol of the Chinese nation and an important symbol of Chinese civilization. This historical and cultural heritage must be well protected and passed on. Real-time remote monitoring, high-precision three-dimensional models, deep learning algorithms... Beijing has carried out more than 120 Great Wall protection projects, and more and more digital technologies have been applied to the protection and research of the Great Wall, giving it new vitality and new brilliance in the new era.
The picture shows a schematic diagram of different protection methods of the Dazhuangke Great Wall using digital technology. Photo courtesy of Beijing Unnamed Cultural Technology Co., Ltd.
The majestic Badaling Great Wall, the steep and magnificent Jiankou Great Wall, the ingeniously constructed Simatai Great Wall... The Great Wall in Beijing is winding and undulating, solidly built, and is an important part of the Great Wall.
Since 2000, Beijing has carried out more than 120 Great Wall protection projects, established the first national Great Wall protection and restoration practice base, launched the Great Wall research and repair project, the Great Wall deformation and damage monitoring project, etc. More and more digital technologies are being applied to the protection and research of the Great Wall, allowing the ancient cultural heritage to shine with the glory of the times.
Digital Records
Establishing a full-cycle digital archive for the Great Wall
In Beijing's Yanqing District, the Dazhuang Great Wall is full of greenery and vitality. "Look, this is a cloud camera, and those are rain, wind, temperature and humidity sensors." Following the direction pointed by Liu Baoshan, director of the research center of Beijing Unnamed Cultural Technology Co., Ltd., four sets of equipment can be seen installed on both sides of the wall, "so that real-time remote monitoring can be carried out."
More than 50 kilometers away, on the "Cultural Relics Digital Archives and Health Management" platform of Beijing Weiming Wenbo Culture Technology Co., Ltd., click to enter the "Dazhuangke Section Great Wall Research and Restoration Project". The top of the electronic screen displays the number of cultural relics involved in the project, panoramic data, project progress, and inspection records. The lower left corner is the real-time picture taken by the camera installed at the project site.
In 2022, Yanqing District launched the research-based restoration project of the Dazhuangke section of the Great Wall. "The project adopts a model of multi-disciplinary full-process collaboration, scientific experiment follow-up, digital full-process tracking and recording, and dynamic archive management," said Tang Yuyang, executive vice president of the Beijing Great Wall Culture Research Institute.
This project is different from traditional engineering archives. Taking the early archaeological work of the project as an example, the researchers selected four time points: before the archaeological excavation, after the site was cleaned, during the archaeological excavation, and after the archaeological excavation, to collect digital information on the Dazhuangke Great Wall and its surrounding environment. In the three-dimensional digital model, everything from the landforms and vegetation around the wall to the inscriptions on the bricks on the enemy tower are recorded in detail. "Through digital collection and full-process recording, we can compare the changes that have occurred in the Great Wall during the archaeological process, making the irreversible archaeological process reversible in the digital world, and providing information for later repair design and related research." Liu Baoshan introduced.
In addition to the three-dimensional spatial data of the Great Wall itself, the researchers also deployed intelligent Internet of Things devices on the Dazhuangke Great Wall, and used artificial intelligence check-in and slow live broadcast to preserve the implementation process of the repair project and the growth of surrounding vegetation, providing data support for studying the impact of project implementation and the surrounding ecological environment on the Great Wall.
On this basis, the research team launched the Dazhuangke Great Wall Cloud Exhibition, allowing the audience to feel as if they were on the scene, feel the former grandeur and magnificence of the Ming Great Wall, appreciate the beauty of the Great Wall in four seasons, and observe the entire process of the restoration project.
Yanqing District also used drone oblique photography and infrared high-altitude mapping to model the Great Wall, completing a 2-centimeter-precision 3D model of all the brick and stone Great Wall in the district. "The establishment of a high-precision 3D model has realized the digital management of the Great Wall," said Yu Haikuan, deputy director of the Yanqing District Museum (Cultural Relics Management Office). "We will rely on existing achievements and use virtual reality, augmented reality, digital holographic technology, immersive experience, etc. to develop digital application scenarios for the Great Wall suitable for multiple groups of people."
Digital monitoring
Automatically identify the deformation of the Great Wall
In the Urban Big Data Application Research Center of Beijing University of Civil Engineering, several computers display real-time weather and vibration information at eight locations on the Great Wall, including Juyongguan and Huanghuacheng.
Affected by multiple factors such as natural erosion and weathering, human production and life, and historical environmental changes, many parts of the Great Wall have been damaged, some are on the verge of collapse, and some ground parts have disappeared completely.
Protection is urgent. In recent years, the Beijing Great Wall Cultural Research Institute has taken the lead in China in conducting research on the Great Wall deformation monitoring technology based on multi-modal fusion of Beidou and meteorology, and has explored preventive protection of the Great Wall.
"By monitoring the deformation of the Great Wall in real time, we can promptly discover potential safety hazards of the Great Wall itself and provide a basis for the scientific formulation of preventive measures," said Liu Fei, associate professor at the Urban Big Data Application Research Center of Beijing University of Civil Engineering.
Using drone oblique photography technology, researchers obtained 352 kilometers of images of the Great Wall of Beijing, produced detailed orthophotos and real-life 3D models, and built a database of the existing morphology of about 100 kilometers of the Great Wall. Using deep learning algorithms, an intelligent recognition model for the Great Wall morphology was developed, which can autonomously identify the morphological features of the Great Wall, including different types of damage such as collapse and missing. After testing, the recognition accuracy of the model is higher than 80%. In the future, the annual data intelligent recognition and comparison will be used to quickly understand the changes in the Great Wall morphology and take targeted measures in a timely manner.
The team also conducted an in-depth analysis of the impact of natural meteorological conditions such as vehicles, rainfall, wind, temperature, and lightning on the deformation of the Great Wall, and built a cloud monitoring technology system for the Great Wall deformation disaster, which can sense the vibration and deformation of the Great Wall in real time and issue risk warnings.
Using the "Beidou + accelerometer" vibration monitoring technology, researchers conducted a two-year study on "Great Wall environmental vibration disaster monitoring" in Huairou District, Beijing, and accumulated a large amount of data information such as the vibration frequency, deformation and displacement of the Great Wall. "A series of research results provide a scientific basis for the formulation of targeted Great Wall protection measures, which will help reduce the damage to the Great Wall caused by natural meteorological conditions." Liu Fei said.
Preventive protection has been launched on a larger scale. In 2023, the Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau and Beijing University of Civil Engineering jointly launched the first full-area aerial monitoring of the Great Wall, and have completed aerial photography and data analysis of the Great Wall resources in Miyun District and Yanqing District. It is expected that within this year, all masonry Great Walls in Beijing will complete aerial monitoring and digital 3D modeling. In the future, it is expected that image recognition and big data analysis will be used to realize intelligent automatic recognition and monitoring of morphological changes, diagnose the severity of the "illness" based on the morphological changes of the Great Wall, and propose targeted "treatment" plans.
Micro-trace extraction
Cracking the code of the Great Wall inscriptions
Sihai Town, Yanqing District, Beijing, is surrounded by green mountains and the Jiuyanlou Great Wall is majestic. Climbing up the stairs, I saw several damaged stone tablets embedded in the wall, and there was almost no text on the surface of one of the stone tablets that could be recognized by the naked eye.
"Two thousand years of history, tens of thousands of miles of stretch", the Great Wall is my country's largest and most widely distributed cultural heritage. The stone tablets standing along the Great Wall record the history of the construction and garrison of the Great Wall, as well as the political, military, economic, cultural and social development along the line, and are invaluable historical materials.
However, due to the vicissitudes of time and erosion by wind and rain, many of the inscriptions on the Great Wall are almost lost. In 2022, a research team consisting of the Beijing Great Wall Cultural Research Institute, Beijing Beijian University Architectural Design Institute and Xinwei Changxiang Digital Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. digitally collected 54 Great Wall inscriptions in Yanqing District and extracted and analyzed the inscriptions in micro-trace form.
Ni Yue, deputy chief engineer of the Architectural Design Institute of Beijing University of Architecture and Technology, introduced that micro-trace extraction uses high-precision 3D laser scanners, high-definition cameras and other professional equipment to scan and photograph the inscriptions in a non-contact and non-destructive manner, and then processes the collected 3D point cloud and 2D image data through professional algorithms, so that the blurred text that is difficult for the human eye to recognize can be "seen" again.
Compared with the previous method of using physical rubbings to obtain inscription information, micro-trace extraction can not only collect information without contact, but also restore information to the greatest extent possible.
In this way, the historical scene recorded on a stone tablet of Jiuyanlou Great Wall gradually became "clear": In the winter of the 18th year of Wanli (1590), Shanxi Provincial Surveillance Commissioner Sun Hualong accompanied Xuanfu Governor Guo Siwei to climb up the Jiuyanlou of Huoyan Mountain along the path. Looking at the magnificent winter scenery of the Great Wall, he was inspired to write a poem...
Among the 54 Great Wall stone tablets, there are several types, including city construction steles, viewing and building steles, poetry steles, door lintels, temple steles, etc. There are more than 10,000 characters on the steles. More than 1/4 of the characters need further confirmation and identification. Finally, more than 1,000 characters were directly identified using micro-trace extraction technology.
"The study of the Great Wall inscriptions is of great significance for understanding the construction process, construction regulations, project scale and investment, frontier poetry and folk culture of the Great Wall." Tang Yuyang said that in the future, the research team will continue to carry out more in-depth research and exploration and protection practices on the Great Wall, so that the value of the Great Wall, a world cultural heritage, can be more comprehensively interpreted and explained.
