Dr. Richard M. Levy is attracting international acclaim for his high-quality 3-D computer visualization research aimed at preserving significant historical sites.

A professor of planning and urban design, Levy recently virtually reconstructed one of Thailand’s most significant Khmer architectural achievements, the Phimai temple complex. This United Nations World Heritage Site was completed in the 12th century -– during the golden age of the Khmer empire.

Levy’s work is not only opening doors to bygone civilizations, but also helping establish the burgeoning virtual tourism industry, a field that many believe has significant economic, environmental and educational benefits.

Levy has been invited to present his research to the world’s top computer graphics experts, who are gathering later this month in Los Angeles for the Annual SIGGRAPH Conference’s Computer Animation Festival. This event is considered the "Academy Awards" of the computer graphics industry.

The U of C professor’s virtual reconstruction of the Phimai temple site in Thailand, located about 275 kilometers northeast of Bangkok, is now being used by Thai authorities to promote the site as a cultural tourism destination. Phimai was an important Khmer economic, religious and military center from about 500-1100 A.D.

“Phimai set the precedent for Angkor Wat in terms of Khmer architectural details,” says Levy. Angkor is another renowned Khmer temple site in Cambodia and one of the great architectural achievements in world history. Angkor is a huge tourist draw, perhaps one of the biggest in all of Southeast Asia. It was also where the summer action movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed.

Angkor is now expected to attract about a million tourists a year by the end of the decade. However, Levy warns the wear and tear of all these visitors might be too much.

“In the future, virtual computer models may be the only means that the public can experience certain historical sites. Particularly where public safety risks occur or where human traffic poses a serious danger to the integrity of the structure,” says Levy.

For the Phimai project, Levy is using computer visualization to monitor the site’s medieval stone structures and gauge the impact of the wear-and-tread of tourists.

His involvement in the project was initiated by Dr. Walter Jamieson, a U of C urban planning professor who is currently a visiting scholar at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok. Levy was recruited to help "reconstruct" Phimai as part of a promotional tourism video, website and educational project for Thai school children.

Levy believes virtual tourism will also help give other school children around the world access to historical sites and epochs to help them with their studies. His work is already helping archaeologists and others with their research.

“The Phimai computer visualization models offer archaeologists and museum curators a safe, environmentally friendly method for testing various scenarios,” he says. For example, the virtual reality models allow experts to test different theories about how the temple looked in the 12th century, based on what researchers have discovered at similar Khmer temple sites.

Virtual tourism can also give travel agents and travellers a sneak preview of modern sites they are thinking of visiting, Levy says, so that they can better plan trips in advance.

For his next project, Levy hopes to virtually reconstruct downtown Calgary to show how it has grown and developed over the past century.

Reconstructing 3-D models with such quality and detail demands enormous computational resources. Delivering on this front is the MACI Alpha Cluster project. MACI (short for multimedia advanced computational infrastructure) is a collaborative project of the Universities of Calgary, Alberta, Lethbridge and Manitoba.

Related websites:

Computer Reconstruction website

Research design website

09-Aug-2001