Recherche par auteur > Daniele Malfitana

The availability of digital surveying and restitution tools makes it possible to have highly reliable three-dimensional copies of physical space with increasingly low costs and short lead times. These provide not only an important baseline, but also a powerful tool for archaeological data and related historical reconstructions to be archived, managed, analyzed and shared. 

On the basis of this assumption, a research group led by the University of Catania and the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the Italian National Research Council, which brings together researchers interested in the study of multi-layered urban organisms analysed in their historical evolution and in their strategies of exploitation of environmental resources, has developed over the years a peculiar methodology of investigation. 

This involves the construction of a digital copy of the contexts of interest, understood as a true working environment, where multiple types of data, linked by belonging to the same physical space, can be analysed to produce knowledge useful not only for research, but also for the planning, protection and enhancement of urban centres and their territories.

This experience, fine-tuned by several research projects conducted over a decade (OpenCity, TeCHNIC, Spider) in some urban and peri-urban contexts in the Sicilian area (Catania, Syracuse) is articulated on a now well-defined workflow, which involves: I) the integrated survey (laser scanning, photogrammetry; DGPS) and digital restitution of the physical space, including the use of 3d models developed following the Historic Building Information Modeling paradigm; II) the collection of data in a database equipped with geospatial extensions specifically designed and developed for the management of descriptive data a multi-layered urban organism in the complexity of its historical manifestations; III) the management and geospatial analysis in a GIS environment; IV) The publication of the results in a special webgis portal.

Aware of the importance of defining shared standards able to rule the ever-increasing production of geospatial data for archaeological research purposes, the contribution will focus in particular on describing the technical and methodological aspects.