A new smartphone app is offering hope to people trying to preserve Ukraine's war-threatened historic buildings. The "Backup Ukraine" project now lets ordinary people become archivists by using an app to digitally capture buildings and monuments as 3D models. Already, the app has recorded more than 6,000 downloads, and has between 30 and 50 active users, regularly contributing scans. Backup Ukraine — launched by UNESCO and Blue Shield Denmark — relies on volunteers to document important sites. The scanning app uses photogrammetry, or LiDAR technology, to create detailed, three-dimensional models. All the processing is done in the cloud, and every scan geo-tagged to a Ukrainian location is automatically saved to a database.
