'Cyber-archaeology' salvages lost Iraqi art

Priceless historical artefacts have been lost recently, to violence in Iraq and earthquakes in Nepal. But "cyber-archaeologists" are working with volunteers to put you just a few clicks away from seeing these treasures - in colourful, three-dimensional detail.

The effort began with a conversation between two young researchers in late February, days after shocking footage emerged of Islamic State militants tearing down and smashing artworks in the Mosul Museum in northern Iraq.

Chance Coughenour and Matthew Vincent are PhD students working for the Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage (ITN-DCH), an EU-funded project set up to apply new technology to cultural heritage issues.

"We were talking about the destruction and [Chance] suggested that we crowd-source the reconstruction of these images, using photogrammetry and images from the public," Mr Vincent told the BBC's Science in Action program.

Photogrammetry is a popular technique in modern cultural heritage projects. It uses software to turn multiple 2D photographs of a single object into 3D images.

"It's an incredibly useful technology that can create 3D models just using photos from a normal digital camera," explained Mr Vincent.

He and his colleague realised that if they could find enough photos of the destroyed artworks, they could salvage them in cyberspace.

So they set up Project Mosul. People who have visited now-destroyed sites - beginning with the Mosul Museum - can submit their photographs. Then volunteers log on to help sort the images, and those with the know-how get stuck into the job of rebuilding the artefacts.

The project has received more than 700 photos so far, including 543 showing artefacts from Mosul. A gallery on the homepage displays 15 3D reconstructions, completed by nine volunteers.

"We have others who are anxious to learn how to do photogrammetry and to help out," said Mr Vincent, adding that his main hold-up at the moment is finding the time to manage and develop the platform.

The nine volunteers have used their choice of software to construct the replicas, and then uploaded them via the 3D sharing platform Sketch fab.

The obvious favourite in the gallery so far is a lion from the Mosul Museum. When the statue itself was still standing, it was clearly also a popular subject for visitors to photograph. Some 16 photos of the lion were received, which allows for quite a detailed reconstruction.

"The more photographs you have, the more potential you have to create more 3D points and have a denser cloud," said Mr Vincent.

Because more images make for better models, the project has even made available some pictures from the original ransacking footage, because they may help with the reconstruction process.