STARC has been active in supporting and promoting innovation in the development of technologies and methodologies for the implementation of scientific visualization (including 3D) aspects of research and communication of Cultural Heritage. By securing approximately half a million Euros for a period of 6 years via a number of EC funded initiatives, STARC is conducting world widely recognized innovative research in defining new research paradigms in Cultural Heritage, developing research methodologies that take full advantage of existing visualization technologies, developing new ones or adapting existing ones and training young researchers and PhD candidates in a most innovative research environment.

This is of high relevance for Cypriot society: it improves and modernizes the research and presentation of its history and the remains of its past, which in turn supports tourism. In Cyprus, heritage and culture are among the main attraction factors for visitors, according to the World Tourism Organization. STARC has laid the foundation in Cyprus for the creation of virtual museums with the rich material available in museums, monuments, churches and archaeological sites on the island. The strong cooperation in this field with leading institutions in the world, among them NCSA at the University of Illinois, Fraunhofer IGD Institute of Germany and CNR-ISTI in Italy will lead to the development of state-of-the-art infrastructure, innovative research methodologies and visionary technologies in the field of archaeology and cultural heritage.

3D scientific visualization is an efficient method of visualizing a large amount of heterogeneous data, thus enabling visual problem solving. Because it is possible to visualize concepts and ideas (translated into a quantifiable and measurable geometric language) and archaeological ‘facts’, visualization is an ideal means for validating hypotheses, running tests, performing predictions and simulating behavior under different circumstances and processes in a given period. It enables the connection between the world based on our intuition, previous knowledge or imagination, and the ‘world of science’, that is what we observe, measure and quantify and is also an ideal tool for analyzing virtually recreated cultural material in its presumed ‘real’ diachronic or chronologic context. It also allows a visual juxtaposition of the fragmentary archaeological evidence and the researcher’s mental model of this reality with the reality virtually reconstructed. In this sense, 3D scientific visualization serve as an interactive, multi-disciplinary research platform, where hypotheses regarding our reconstructed interpretation of the past may be validated.