Low-cost documentation of traditional agro-industrial buildings by close-range photogrammetry

Traditional agro-industrial buildings are an important part of the heritage of Galicia (northwest of Spain), but these buildings are now in danger of disappearing. In order to preserve it, an exhaustive and rigorous work of documentation should be undertaken, its well as other actions. This paper is about the graphic and metric documentation put together by the authors in relation to a group of traditional farm buildings in Galicia. We used a method based on close-range photogrammetry techniques. The method is simple, cheap and accessible to the layperson. The tools we used were low-cost conventional cameras, plumb lines and monoscopic digital photogrammetric stations. The accuracy of our method compared to topographic methods proved satisfactory, although it must be borne in mind that the type of building surveyed is not particularly tall. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.