In advance of her Fall 2020 lecture in the Historic Preservation Program, Program Director Jorge Otero-Pailos interviews Dr. Debra Laefer. Laefer is a Professor of Urban Informatics at New York University in the Center for Urban Science and the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering. Her work often stands at the cross-roads of technology creation and community values such as devising technical solutions for protecting architecturally significant buildings from subsurface construction. Her current research interests focus on subsurface data integration with high density laser scanning, hyperspectral imagery, and historical data about the built environment and its forgotten remnants as a way to both understand urban spaces and to manage them.
They discuss the idea of “the invisible in heritage” and the use of remote sensing platforms to collect data. They also discuss connecting data above ground to data below ground and the value in making connections across disciplines. The episode concludes with a conversation about future implementation of Laefer’s work and how remote sensing technologies can help us unpack the hidden histories of sites and communities.
Source by Columbia GSAPP
