2018-2019 Grant in Aid of Research

The Use of ESRI Platform in the Reconstruction of the Hisban Longue Duree Project

Stanley Lebrun

This thesis project enlarges upon one aspect of Dr. LaBianca’s “Animation of the Cultural Landscape of Hisban and Vicinity in the Longue Duree” project, which is a 3D visualization of Hisban through time depicting the effect of human impact on the land. It is from this standpoint that this thesis project implements the use of ESRI’s platform in order to showcase its capability in aiding the Archaeological community in visualizing and sharing archaeological data. Though ESRI will be the primary tool in this project, other tools such as Sketch Up and Autodesk Maya will be used to create 3D features such as vegetation. CityEngine and ArcGIS Pro tool will be used to reconstruct the narrative of the ancient city of Hisban during the Iron Age using archaeological data and experts’ imagination. These tools merge both the geospatial world (map making) and the 3D world to provide the capability to preserve the desired information behind the 3D content we are creating. This project will also demonstrate how the use of ESRI’s Portal for ArcGIS is able to provide the archaeological community with a gateway to share and collaborate on discoveries. These tools will enables users to edit, update or modify the information being shared and at the same time provide vetting capability to those who own the information.