3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios: GIS Pilot Applications

Abstract

The project 3D and 4D Simulations for Landscape Reconstruction and Damage Scenarios: GIS PilotApplications has been devised with the intention to deal with the demand for research, innovation andapplicative methodology on the part of the international programme, requiring concrete results toincrease the capacity to know, anticipate and respond to a natural disaster. This project therefore setsout to develop an experimental methodology, a wide geodatabase, a connected performant GISplatform and multifunctional scenarios able to profitably relate the added values deriving fromdifferent geotechnologies, aimed at a series of crucial steps regarding landscape reconstruction, eventsimulation, damage evaluation, emergency management, multi-temporal analysis. The Vesuvius areahas been chosen for the pilot application owing to such an impressive number of people and buildings subject to volcanic risk that one could speak in terms of a possible national disaster. The steps of theproject move around the following core elements: creation of models that reproduce the territorial andanthropic structure of the past periods, and reconstruction of the urbanized area, with temporaldistinctions; three-dimensional representation of the Vesuvius area in terms of infrastructuralresidentialaspects; GIS simulation of the expected event; first examination of the healthcareepidemiologicalconsequences; educational proposals. This paper represents a proactive contributionwhich describes the aims of the project, the steps which constitute a set of specific procedures for themethodology which we are experimenting, and some thoughts regarding the geodatabase useful to“package” illustrative elaborations. Since the involvement of the population and adequate hazardpreparedness are very important aspects, some educational and communicational considerations arepresented in connection with the use of geotechnologies to promote the knowledge of ris