Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1497281
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 APRIL 2023 NEWS "TAKE the scene of the crime home with you..." – this will be the new evolution in the Maltese justice system, as a budding new technology inside the University of Malta's Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences gets ready to enter the mainstream. Inside the MaKS Immersion Labs, criminologist Prof. Sav- iour Formosa is showing me a bird's eye view of Floriana, that I can see through a headset for me to hover above by simply taking a few steps inside this laboratory. In another contained space, known as the SIntegraM C.A.V.E, where overhead projectors beam 3D scanned models of places such as Vic- toria's Citadel or Għar Dalam, researchers at the Immersion Lab can walk through these places without taking a single step, turning corners, peeking behind boulders, or suddenly floating above the space they are in. Prof. Formosa, familiar to the general public as the compiler of annual crime statistics and the author of various studies on Maltese crime patterns, hopes the work being done at the University of Malta can bring 'eXtended Reality' (XR) – a term encompassing augment- ed reality, virtual reality and mixed reality – into a myriad of spatial and planning appli- cations, from planning to tour- ism, restoration to healthcare, as well as the criminal justice system. A case in point, he mentions, is using scanned areas of Mal- ta's geography to recreate or rebuild, or even being able to reimagine, what land and sur- faces looked like before they were demolished or suffered a collapse. Examples abound – a recent example is the collapse of the Bighi peninsula bound- ary wall beneath what is now Heritage Malta's headquarters, or even the Azure Window in Gozo. "We can scan entire zones and feed it to our computers, where all the photographs of a particular area can be used to generate into a detailed 3-D mesh," he explains, as he hands me a joystick and a virtual re- ality headset. I am suddenly plunged into the underground tunnels of Valletta, where I can roam from one room to the other and into the great vault- ed chambers beneath the cap- ital city, fully immersed into a different reality. Working with the EU-funded SIntegraM equipment with- in the University's Faculty of Media and Knowledge Scienc- es, the research team – which comprises researchers Tram Nguyen and Fabrizio Calì – has scanned underground struc- tures, old buildings, cliff faces, and a good portion of Malta's surface... in the latter case, al- lowing users to have an entire village reproduced before their eyes in their headset in the form of a bird's eye view. Other responsibilities involve assist- ing other students and depart- ments with varied XR research projects, as well as a facial re- construction project with the 3D scanned skull of Maria Ade- odata Pisani, a beatified nun. But Prof. Formosa believes the technology has great potential to be applied within criminal investigations and the courts by capturing the crime scenes in 3D, after a crime and also allowing for comparisons of these scenes with archived 3D scans from prior to the crimi- nal event. Particularly useful in sites severely damaged by ex- plosions or similar destructive crimes. Bring the crime scene into the For jurors and lawyers in criminal trials, accessing the scene of a crime physically might be a thing of the past as computer experts and criminologists at the University of Malta pioneer a new way of 'travelling' to the site of the crime as MATTHEW VELLA finds out