Mission

Comparison of traditional and digital survey results. Digital results are in red. The discrepancy is easily spotted in the callout.

The world is losing its architectural and archeological cultural heritage faster than it can be documented. This is a dilemma that is becoming a crisis of global proportions. Unlike artifacts safely housed in museums, heritage sites are subject to forces of nature, both benign and catastrophic, time, and aggressions of humankind. Cultural heritage sites are the legacy of humanity reminding us that we are all part of one shared human experience.

One of the underlying factors for this crisis in the preservation of cultural heritage sites lies in the continued reliance on conventional documentation technologies and methods. Conventional surveys are time consuming, poorly detailed, and inherently inadequate for heritage sites. Traditional documentation technologies and methods do not have the capacity to meet the global scope of this crisis in preservation. There is an urgent need for reliable documentation as the key step required for the preservation of heritage sites. An accurate site survey is the first step in the development of a site management plan. For most sites there exists little or no documentation whatsoever, and often what exists is inaccurate.

There is also a need to empower local stewards with new documentation technologies and cultural resource management methods so that that they may be better enabled in their stewardship.

Finally, there is a need for a secure, and accessible archive in which to store new digital data of heritage sites for use by site managers and other preservation professionals, and for use as an educational resource for the general public.

CyArk, created in 2002 as a nonprofit project of the Kacyra Family Foundation (KFF, a 501(c)3 charitable trust), is addressing these needs. In the 1990's KFF's founders Ben and Barbara Kacyra developed and brought to market the first commercially available High Definition Survey (HDS) laser scanner through their company Cyra Technologies. Cyra Technologies was acquired by Leica Geosystems in 2001. And since then CyArk has been pursuing its mission of "Preserving Cultural Heritage Sites through collecting, archiving and providing open access to data created by laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art technologies."