Progress Report on the Laconian Churches’ 3D Survey Project – The Spatial Hub 3D Scholarly Edition –

Abstract. This paper describes an ongoing project dedicated to three-dimensional survey and digital preservation of Byzantine churches in the historically significant Laconia region of Greece. Constructed between the fourth and fifteenth centuries, several churches in this region exhibit significant deterioration. Employing photogrammetry via UAVs, action cameras and DSLR cameras, the project has thus far achieved the 3D capture of 67 churches within the Sparti and Eurotas municipalities, resulting in a 7.2 TB dataset. To facilitate interdisciplinary research and address the limitations in traditional architectural representations, the authors are developing ‘Spatial Hub’, a web-based platform designed to create 3D Scholarly Editions. This platform currently incorporates functions such as in-scene annotation, online collaborative editing, virtual reality compatibility and spatial analysis tools. Future developers will focus on integrating features, including temporal display control, dimensional grid overlays, multi-view visualisation, comparative analysis across multiple churches and AI-driven automated annotation for machine learning applications. Spatial Hub is envisioned as a crucial communication instrument for researchers. It is also applicable to other regions and scholarly disciplines dealing with limited textual evidence.