Luka Babić

Preservation and Revitalization of Erdody Castle in Jastrebarsko, Croatia

One of Erdody family estates, a Castle located in the town of Jastrebarsko in Croatia, has immeasurable historical value for Croatia as well as the residents of Jastrebarsko. Unfortunately, the Castle is currently in an extremely ruinous state due to absence of maintenance for a significant amount of time. This was the result of both the changes in proprietary structure as well as the insufficient funding capabilities of the local government. Thus, a cross border project was applied for EU financing by the local government for the purpose of Castle revitalization. A prerequisite to any such project is as always documentation of the current state. The complexity of the object in question and its current state proved to be a significant challenge for conducting adequate survey. The castle is a four winged structure with a courtyard in the centre adorned with arcades and baroque pillars. Out of four of its cone like towers, two remain while the other two are on the foundation level. Beside defensive the Castle had a residential purpose as well. It is surrounded by a moat and continuing on is a beautiful park spreading on 9.47 hectares. It also contains a brook named Reka and a pond named Park. Across from the palace, there is an old granary with a beautiful green patio in front of it. Due to afore mentioned complexity of the task, laser scanning was the method of choice for conducting surveys. The resulting 124 scans and over 3 billion points speak volumes about the magnitude of the undertaken task. Both the exterior and interior of the object had to be surveyed with sufficient accuracy to ensure the quality of subsequent analysis for other professions involved. The castle has four floors with the first being the basement and the fourth encompassing two rooms of the remaining towers. Those were actually completely inaccessible as no staircase leading to them exists anymore and are too high up to reach using normal ladders for instance. The complete process of survey, and all the challenges encountered on the project will be further elaborated in the paper. To complement laser scanning conventional surveying techniques were also applied. GPS survey provided the basis while total station survey was implemented for point cloud georeferencing as well as for control surveys facilitating quality analysis. Quality control and quality analysis are integral and indispensable aspects of any survey work but they weigh even heavier in laser scanning projects of this complexity and magnitude.