The Scottish Ten was initiated by the Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution Michael Russell in early 2009, at the Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Documentation conference.
The minister had heard Ben Kacyra, father of the laser scanner and founder of CyArk, speak about his mission to digitally document the 500 most at risk heritage sites across the world over the next five years.
The Scottish Ten project's primary aims were to: Led by Historic Scotland and its partner Glasgow School of Art, under their collaborative venture The Centre for Digital Documentation and Visualisation LLP, the Scottish Ten project created digital documentation of the sites for future development of world class and innovative research, education and management.
The overseas sites were selected to fulfil Scottish Government International objectives in Australia, China, India, Japan and the United States.
The project used highly precise, high speed terrestrial laser scanning systems, some capable of sub-millimetre data capture and aerial optical remote sensing technology called LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging).