3D-Sutras: A web based atlas of laser scanned Buddhist stone inscriptions in China

An important cultural heritage is located in the Chinese providence of Sichuan: about 1000 years ago, Buddhist stone inscriptions have been carved into rock – the Stone Sutras. Archiving the current state of the inscriptions, their transcription and translation into digital assets, their interpretation and provision to the public and scientific community are of a major interest to an interdisciplinary research team of art-historians, geodesists and geographic information scientists. This paper describes the innovative architecture of a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) which combines standardised geospatial OGC Web Services (OWS) with an existing XML document system providing art-historic and text-scientific information. Further a web-based interactive atlas system for analysis and multimedia presentation in 2D and 3D has been realized as a sustainable solution helping arthistorians and text-scientists to examine Buddhist stone inscriptions in the future. Innovative aspects comprise in particular the adaptation of the data pre-processing to enable the portrayal of terrestrial laser scan (TLS) data of relevant sites by a Web 3D Service and furthermore the integration of standards across different domains, including GIS analysis functions relevant for historians and archaeologists through several Web Processing Services (WPS).