Topics

Use of 3D Archives of Local Dwelling Space-Visualizing History of Settlements beyond Disasters and DevelopmentKOBAYASHI Hideyuki (Dr. Eng), Research Coordinator for Housing Information System
Research Center for Advanced Information Technology(Key words)

3D Archives、Settlements、History

1. Introduction: Historical Documents in 3D
Methods for preserving data even after their formats
became obsolete were developed in the previous study1.
This study applied the developed methods to the data
recording actual settlements, which integrate fragments ofmaps, photos that record historical parts of a settlement.
Also ways to access to the source records from the 3Dobjects, to visualize them on the site, to convert them inany desired format were tried out, in order to extend thepossibilities for future use.
2. Okushiri Island: experiencing DisasterCoastal settlements of the island were destroyed bytsunami and fire after quake on July 12, 1993. However,they were quickly reconstructed through effective support
provided by the Hokkaido prefectural government andthe research institute for housing and urban planning2.
In this study, the settlements were reconstructed
through analysis of old analog photos and maps.

Figure Reconstructed Cape Area in Aonae Village
The area was totally destroyed in 1993, and become a memorial park
after reconstruction. Houses were reconstructed through analysis of oldphotos. The settlement can be seen from any viewpoint. Each house canalso be selected to access the old photos that record it.

The history prior to 1993 included a big fire in 1963
when the population was at its peak. Efforts for reducing
the density, including land readjustment, extension of
the width of roads, and the development of new towns
on the hill were undertaken. A previous tsunami dueto the Central Japan Sea Earthquake in 1983 caused
damage smaller to those of 1993. Footpaths forevacuation to the new town on the hill were added.
These components for disaster mitigation are common
to those that were chosen after 1993, and the sharedexperience obviously provided conditions for rapid
consensus on the reconstruction plan after the far larger
disaster in 1993.
3. Tsukuba: experiencing Large Scale Development

The Japanese government decided to relocate several
functions of the capital Tokyo to Tsukuba region in 1963.
The development process of the region can be traced
through official urban planning drawings, systematicallytaken air photos, design drawings of public buildings andphotos after completion from the 45 organizations(mostly research institutes) involved in the relocation
project, which comprised totally 2,700 hectares.
Seeking for a wider scope, the previous space of a
research institute before the relocation was also surveyed
in this study, and compared with the new campus.
The change of land use before 1963 was also surveyed.
The comparison revealed that the last large scale
development after 1963 was one component of chain ofchanges of one site among forest, military airport, spacefor resettlements of the refugee from colonies after thewar and current research institutes.
Also, histories of organizations show the chain ofrelocations within the metropolitan region, through whichknowledge was continuously accumulated and overlaid.
4. Conclusion: toward a Stock of Empirical Wisdom
In order to achieve the legacy-free usage, the archived
data file is attached with a metafile describing theprocedure to read. A special common format/grammarof this metafile is defined for the developed VirtualConverter, which compiles the metafile to create
executive operations that utilize the data.
This Virtual Converter is integrated in an Androidbased application (VC-3M) for tablets, that present therecorded data on site from the viewpoints and camera
angles obtained from GPS, gravity and magnetic sensors.
The same source code of the Virtual Converter is also
applied to a Windows-based web server application
which can deliver the preserved data in any format
defined by the attached metafile (VC-4D).
Hopefully, the rapidly changing ICT technologies will
not accelerate the legacy process of recorded data andforgetting them, but contribute to the lasting succession ofvaluable empirical wisdom of each local settlement.
[Sources]
1) Basic Research on the Technologies for Permanent
Diachronic Memory of 3D Housing Information.
http://sim.nilim.go.jp/MCS/phi/(in Japanese)
2) Hokkaido Prefectural Cold Region Housing and Urban
Research Institute (Hokkaido Northern Regional Building
Research Institute, today)3) http://sim.nilim.go.jp/Okushiri (in Japanese)4) http://sim.nilim.go.jp/Tsukuba(in Japanese)