Heritage Conservation and Cultural Preservation

Augmented Reality for Structural Inspection of Historic Monuments: The Case of Lausanne Cathedral

Ricardo Maia Avelino, Wenqian Yang, Anjo Weichbrodt, John Ochsendorf, Robert J. Flatt

Published 2025

Thumbnail for Augmented Reality for Structural Inspection of Historic Monuments: The Case of Lausanne Cathedral
📄 Paper
Augmented reality (AR) has been increasingly adopted in different fields of science, engineering and medicine as a tool to empower human interaction with visual data and guide precise interactions with the real world. This paper presents a pioneering use of augmented reality to inspect historic monuments. These form an important part of the world’s cultural heritage and require continuous inspection and maintenance, often executed by interdisciplinary teams and throughout extended time frames. A digital model of 13th-century Lausanne Cathedral is developed to guide and improve inspection activities, focusing on determining its structural behaviour and highlighting related vulnerabilities. Thereby, augmented reality enables a global, interactive visualization of the building information, guiding expert work in the monument and easing collaboration among different disciplines. Future applications and extensions to other historic monuments and disciplines have broad potential to upscale inspections of cultural heritage buildings.

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) has been increasingly adopted in different fields of science, engineering and medicine as a tool to empower human interaction with visual data and guide precise interactions with the real world. This paper presents a pioneering use of augmented reality to inspect historic monuments. These form an important part of the world’s cultural heritage and require continuous inspection and maintenance, often executed by interdisciplinary teams and throughout extended time frames. A digital model of 13th-century Lausanne Cathedral is developed to guide and improve inspection activities, focusing on determining its structural behaviour and highlighting related vulnerabilities. Thereby, augmented reality enables a global, interactive visualization of the building information, guiding expert work in the monument and easing collaboration among different disciplines. Future applications and extensions to other historic monuments and disciplines have broad potential to upscale inspections of cultural heritage buildings.

Topics

Case StudyDigital Documentation and ArchivingPredictive Conservation and Risk AssessmentVirtual Reality Experiences and EducationXRAI for AECconservation AIdamage detectionheritage XR visualizationheritage digitizationmaterial degradation predictionpredictive maintenancerisk modelingstructural health monitoring

Cite this paper

@article{e29b6bfa,
author = {Ricardo Maia Avelino and Wenqian Yang and Anjo Weichbrodt and John Ochsendorf and Robert J. Flatt},
title = {Augmented Reality for Structural Inspection of Historic Monuments: The Case of Lausanne Cathedral},
journal = {International Journal of Architectural Heritage},
volume = {0},
number = {0},
pages = {1--16},
year = {2025},
publisher = {Taylor \& Francis},
doi = {10.1080/15583058.2025.2578318},
URL = {https://doi.org/10.1080/15583058.2025.2578318},
}