University of Southern Queensland and Ipswich City Council have partnered to create a 3D model of one of the city’s oldest buildings.
Surveying students were able to test wearable scanners for the first time as they assisted in creating a living map of Ipswich Art Gallery.
Associate Professor Zahra Gharineiat said the process offered immeasurable opportunities to capture and share information about a piece of the city’s history.
“This is the first time the whole building has been captured as a 3D model, which we will use to later build a digital twin” she said.
“We can embed the gallery with sensors and the digital twin can then be used to protect both the building and its art collections.
“For example you can check the temperature and humidity throughout the gallery or the foot traffic through each exhibit.”
Ipswich Art Gallery is housed in what was originally the Mechanics’ School of Arts and was first opened in 1861.
Ipswich City Council's Principal Surveyor Benjamin Rees said the collaboration presented an excellent chance to capture aging infrastructure that may not have been fully mapped in the past.
“We’re really excited to investigate new technologies for asset management,” he said.
“We’re also really interested in using this data to investigate and model future design.”
The scan was the first time University of Southern Queensland was able to utilise the NavVis VLX mobile mapping system.
The wearable scanners have only recently been in use in Australia and are much more efficient than other surveying techniques.
“Using traditional surveying techniques would take more than a day to map the gallery, but with the NavVIs it was less than two hours,” Associate Professor Gharineiat said.
It is expected that the mobile scanners will be used to create digital twins of additional historic buildings and assets in Ipswich, as part of future collaborations in the coming months.
Did you know that the University of Southern Queensland’s Bachelor of Surveying Technology is Australia’s only online surveying degree? Find out more.
