Improving the accessibility of underwater cultural heritage through digital technologies
The combined use of acoustic imaging, underwater photogrammetry, Virtual/Augmented Reality (V/AR), and acoustic communications enables the possibility to create high-quality digital 3D reconstruction of underwater cultural assets and to build over them new educational experiences for the large public. The digital reconstructions and the related applications based on VR and AR present an enormous and partially unexploited potential for the tourism sector in order to make the underwater cultural heritage more accessible to both divers and non-divers. Moreover, raising the awareness about the underwater cultural and natural heritage is one of the most effective way to preserve this valuable heritage for the future generations.
This presentation describes the studies conducted in the i-MARECulture and BLUEMED projects to document various shipwrecks and ancient submerged structures and the work done for disseminate the results to the large public.
In particular, i-MARECulture aims to develop and integrate serious games, interactive storytelling, immersive technologies and underwater augmented reality for supporting the wide public in acquiring knowledge about the European maritime cultural heritage.
On the other side, the BLUEMED project aims to promote the responsible and sustainable access to the underwater cultural heritage for improving the tourism in the Mediterranean coastal areas.