Egmont Key Lighthouse Preservation and Interpretation Project
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The Egmont Key Lighthouse, constructed in 1858, stands within Egmont Key State Park and is managed by the U.S. Coast Guard, which keeps it closed to the public. Dr. Harrison spearheaded an award-winning project to 3D scan the lighthouse, overseeing a team of USF students who meticulously documented every detail of its interior and exterior using LiDAR scans and 360-degree imaging. Archival research uncovered the personal stories of lighthouse keepers, including Sherrod Edwards, who survived a hurricane by securing his boat to a Palmetto tree at the island’s center. The 3D scans and interpretive materials have been featured in exhibits, public events, and lectures across Florida. They not only help preserve the lighthouse for current and future generations but also provide valuable data for potential conservation efforts.
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Cravens Collection Digital Museum and 3D Archive
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The Cravens Collection is on permanent display at the UB Art Galleries' Anderson Gallery in an exhibit called The Human Aesthetic. The collection was donated to the university by Annette Cravens, who collected over 1100 objects from cultures around the world that date from 4500 B.C.E to the modern era. Obejcts from the collection were documented with Access 3D Lab's handheld structured light scanners and laser scanners, and processed at the lab using Artec Studio and GeoMagic Wrap software.
Access 3D Lab partnered with the University at Buffalo’s Art Galleries to create a digital museum and 3D archive that allows users to explore the collection in the context of the globe and open storage displays. The project merges mainstream collection management and curatorial techniques with 21st century technologies. promotes the global public accessibility of 3D data and models by using standardized data formats and web publishing to facilitate interoperability and integration of structured data. In addition, public audiences can easily access 3D models of objects from the Cravens Collection on Sketchfab. |
Tampa Streetcar Digital Archive Project
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Tampa’s historic streetcar system is an iconic element of the city’s urban heritage. Established in 1892, and still in operation today, the system connects the past to the present and provides transportation for over 1.3 million people each year in Tampa. Residents and visitors are familiar with the sight of modern replica streetcars that traverse Tampa, but there are two additional archival streetcars from the early 20th century that rarely make it of Hillsborough County’s carbarn. Dr. Harrison led a scanning project in 2023 to digitize all three streetcar types, and three stations, in order to create a digital archive for the City of Tampa and to increase public understanding of our much-loved transit system. She presented the results in public presentations at the HART Streetcar Board Meeting and the Tampa Bay History Center's Florida Conversations series.
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Port Tampa City Library Preservation and Flood Analysis
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Port Tampa City Library, built in 1926, is an iconic neoclassical building constructed out of Georgian white marble that sits in a lowlying part of south Tampa vulnerable to storm surge and flooding. In May 2024, Dr. Harrison led a digital survey of the building with a crew of students in the
URP 6930 Terrestrial Lidar Field Methods course. The goal of the project was to plan and complete a digital survey of a complex, historically-significant architectural building, create geospatial deliverables including 3D flythroughs, section drawings, and orthophotos, develop GIS products including 3D vector layers and georeferenced point clouds, and prepare a professional lidar scanning report. This video shows the preliminary scan data collected from the ground. The site and its environs were also scanned with a mobile LiDAR unit and an upcoming project for 2024 is merging both the terrestrial and mobile datasets and visualizing how future flooding events will impact specific parts of the building, informing disaster planning and risk mitigation. |
Fort De Soto Coastal Defense Preservation Project
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Fort De Soto's historic forts attract over 3 million visitors annually, yet erosion and strong storms are causing visible damage to these structures each year. Since 2023, Dr. Harrison has led a team dedicated to preserving the history of these Endicott forts, which contained eight 12-inch M 1890-MI mortars with a maximum range of 6.8 miles (11 km). The LiDAR scans document the entire structure with +/- 2mm accuracy, and will be incorporated into an augmented app, under development as of 2024, that overlays histroical information, 3D graphics, and multimedia content to spark interest in Fort De Soto's coastal defenses and lay the groundwork for future initiatives to fund their physical preservation and restoration. The project was funded in part by the National Park Service's Preservation, Technology, and Training Program. As PI, Dr. Laura Harrison wrote the National Park Service grant and supervised the data collection, processing, and publication of results.
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Aidone Museum Digital Archive
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The Archaeological Museum of Aidone is located in the province of Enna, in Sicily, and it is housed in a former Capuchin convent dedicated to Saint Francis. It opened in 1984 and preserves the findings of over thirty years of excavations in Morgantina, ordered according to chronological and thematic criteria, including the world renowned statue of the Goddess of Morgantina and the Head of Hades. In 2017, 126 archaeological artifacts from the Archaeological Museum of Aidone were captured with laser scanning, structured light 3D scanning and digital photogrammetry. These objects cover a large range of chronology, from prehistoric to late Hellenistic and include terracotta figurines and busts, Greek and Indigenous pottery, prehistoric stone tools, and some stone sculptures.
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Villa Romana del Casale Mosaics 3D Preservation
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The Villa Romana del Casale, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a remarkable ancient Roman villa located in Sicily, Italy. Constructed in the 4th century AD, it boasts stunning and well-preserved mosaics that cover over 3,500 square meters, providing an exquisite glimpse into Roman art and daily life. The villa is renowned for its intricate and vivid floor designs, showcasing scenes of mythological figures, hunting, and everyday activities. The 3D LiDAR scans of Villa Romana del Casale include 38 separate rooms. Data was collected over the course of 3-4 weeks with Faro Focus scanners and processed in Faro Scene. |
Urbanism, Power, and Society: 3D Reconstruction of Seyitömer Höyük
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A series of intensive salvage excavations carried out by Dumlupinar University and the University of Buffalo from 2009-2014 revealed five cultural layers at Seyitömer Höyük, Turkey that span the Early Bronze Age through the Roman period (ca. 2500 B.C.E. through 363 C.E.) The EBA Phase V-B settlement was selected for a 3D reconstruction, because it is one of the best examples of an early urban center in the region, and it dates to the poorly understood but important EBIII period. Further underlining the importance of research here is the site’s location within an active coal mine and all extant remains face imminent destruction as mining commences.
The reconstruction was based on Dr. Laura Harrison's architectural and spatial analysis of the site, and created in 3D Studio Max. |
Open Access Archive of the Bronze Age Archaeology of Seyitömer Höyük
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This project establishes the timing, tempo, and character of sociopolitical changes in late third millennium BCE western Anatolia, by analyzing architectural and radiometric data from the archaeological site of Seyitömer Höyük. The combined insights improve our understanding of the fine-scale processes of daily life in an early urban environment.
Raw data and results are published on Open Context to facilitate transparency and data reuse. |
Tampa Historic Landmarks 3D ArcGIS Webmap
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This 3D Webmap includes georeferenced, decimated terrestrial LiDAR point clouds of historic landmarks around the City of Tampa. Locations include Tampa's Union Station, USF's Research Vessel the R/V Weatherbird II, the City of Tampa's DeSoto Park Community Center, the Ybor City Historic Casitas on N 19th St, Lee's Grocery in Tampa Heights, and the original location of New World Brewery on 8th Ave in Ybor City.
This application was developed by the Masters in Urban and Regional Planning Program and Dr. Laura Harrison/Access 3D Lab at the University of South Florida in consultation with ESRI's Higher Education division. |
Lee's Grocery 3D GIS Project (LiDAR, GIS & Drone)
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Lee’s Grocery, built in 1884, has long been an icon in the Tampa Heights neighborhood. Originally constructed as a general store for a local community of migrant workers, the structure became a neighborhood convenience store in the 1970s, and was later converted into a community pizza/craft beer restaurant in 2007. Today, Lee’s Grocery is part of the resurgence of Tampa Heights, a historic neighborhood bordering downtown Tampa and one of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in the city. This video shows examples of products taught and produced in the Urban and Regional Planning Program GIS Courses at the University of South Florida. Terrestrial Lidar Scans were completed by Dr. Laura Harrison/USF Access 3D Lab.
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Tampa Union Station 3D Digitization and Restoration
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Tampa's Union Station is a landmark of neoclassical architecture and a success story of community-driven preservation. The structure, built in 1912, reflects Tampa's historic importance as a railway destination, but by the 1980s, the station had fallen into disrepair as train travel plummeted. A preservation group, Friends of Tampa Union Station, got together to save the station, raising millions of dollars for restoration work. Dr. Harrison directed the 3D LiDAR digitization of the entire interior, exterior, and roof of the structure, and has collaborated with the architectural firm in charge of the latest phase of structural renovations to bring the models into CAD for drafting.
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3D LiDAR Scan of Battery Charles Mellon at Egmont Key
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Battery Charles Mellon was built in 1904 in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War to protect Tampa Bay from a maritime invasion. Today, it lies in a highly vulnerable location near the fast-eroding western shoreline of Egmont Key. The terrestrial LiDAR scan of the structure was completed over the course of five days, with a team of students from the University of South Florida.
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