400 North Karnataka monuments to be preserved in digital avatar

HUBBALLI: The Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST), in collaboration with the Karnataka State Department of Archaeology (KSDA), has begun the process of 3D digital preservation of more than 400 monuments in North Karnataka that falls under the Belgaum division.
The structures include temples, forts and architectural marvels.
The teams have already completed the digital preservation of nine monuments in Mulgund and now are working in the Haveri district.
Anilkumar Bhasme, the project associate of KSCST, said that the KSCST and the KSDA launched the Karnataka Digital heritage project.
“It is a five-year project under which we will digitise all important monuments, including ancient temples, churches, mosques, forts, Jain basadi, inscriptions, architectural marvels and other things which are maintained by the state archaeology department only,” he said.
“We have categorised the state into four divisions — Bengaluru, Mysuru, Belgavi and Kalaburagi. In the last three-and-a-half years, we have completed the digitisation of monuments in the Bengaluru, Mysuru and Kalaburagi divisions. Recently, we started digital preservation of more than 400 monuments identified under the Belagavi division which covers Haveri, Gadag, Bagalkot, Vijayapura, Belagavi, Dharwad and Uttar Kannada districts. We have already digitised more than 1,500 monuments in the other three divisions,” Bhasme added.
“We are preserving the monuments in 5-6 formats such as mesh diagrams, auto-Cad diagrams and photography and it will finally be converted into a 3D digitised format to preserve it for future generations. It will be helpful to renovate monuments that suffer damage as we can access the digital formats,” he said.
“Now we are working in Haveri. We have formed two teams of experts that include technicians, videographers and others under the guidance of Dr U T Vijay, chief scientific officer of KSCST. We will scan all points of each monument, like the entrance, exit, terrace, inner layers and other parts,” Bhasme added.
“We are using hi-end cameras to digitise the monuments. Each monument can be viewed in 360 degrees. We will work in the field to scan the monuments for two weeks every month. It will take at least a year to cover all monuments identified under the Belagavi division. Once it is completed, we will submit a report to the state government and hand over all the digitised copies of the monuments,” he added.
“During our visits, we found that most monuments in Haveri and Ballari are not in a good condition and they need to be preserved properly,” Bhasme added.