The Caves in Skali – Aglantzia area were formed during the 14th century AD by the Frankish and Venetian conquerors of Cyprus, as they had turned the area into a quarry for the extraction of rocks, with which they built the historic Walls of Nicosia. Geoimaging ltd conducted a Topographical survey in order to create a high-detailed 3D model of these caves.

Mapping and modelling the complicated and irregular geometry of caves is a challenging task. Conventional equipment such as total stations provides the highest accuracy, but the number of points acquired by this equipment is very limited because of the arbitrary selection that must be performed by the surveyor; only some selected points of the cave can be measured.  Thus, this method can give only a rough and general idea of the cave’s shape but it is not suitable for high-speed, high-resolution mapping of complex and irregular surfaces.

For this reason, in this kind of projects, Geoimaging ltd uses 3D laser scanning technology, which is a state-of-the-art method suitable for recording underground environments and caves. 3D Laser Scanning is clearly the most promising measuring tool for documenting caves, as it can acquire millions of 3D points, at very high spatial densities on complex multifaceted and irregular objects such as caves within minutes.