FROM EXCAVATION DATA TO HBIM ENVIRONMENT AND CLOUD SHARING: THE CASE STUDY OF <i>DOMUS REGIA, SACRARIA MARTIS ET OPIS</i> (ROMAN FORUM, ROME - ITALY)

The importance of the Digital Atlas of Rome has been crucial in order to map and analyse archaeological remains of the monumental layout of ancient Rome, enhancing the contextual connections and easing the interpretation the original city-scapes and architecture. Then, the main goal has been twofold: to recompose the archaeological framework of available knowledge and to propose reconstructive hypotheses of ancient buildings. The Domus Regia, Sacraria Martis et Opis is one of these important buildings, excavated and documented over the years. In this regard, the archaeological data and the hypothetical reconstruction of the Domus Regia have been the focus of this project. In fact, the beginning of this integrative project is due to the desire to investigate how different methodology and workflows can be combined synergistically in a HBIM platform in order to ease data documentation, management and dissemination. Informative platforms and cloud solutions may be the proper solution for integrating metric data with semantic archaeological data, including and updating previous analyses. For this reason, the Domus Regia data has been managed inside a FOSS HBIM platform (FreeCAD), which was designed as a dynamic environment for modelling parametrically the ancient building and connecting related IFC objects with semantic information. Then, the resulted HBIM model has been valued and shared by using BIMData cloud platform and tested inside another environment developed ad-hoc for archaeological purposes.

Relocating Brazil’s Capital Inland

When Brasilia was inaugurated in 1960, the Serviço de Documentação (Documentation Service) in the Brazilian president’s office published a multivolume compendium of collected and annotated excerpts from historical antecedents that had considered the idea of relocating Brazil’s capital. Based on this publication, in addition to archival material from other sources, a history can be traced of a long-standing, even if discontinuous, desire to locate a capital in Brazil’s interior. It is a desire that can be framed within disparate political projects, such as the shifting away from Lisbon as the center of the Portuguese empire, the transformation of a colony into a kingdom, the liberal repudiation of an ancient régime monarchy located in South America, or the construction of a unified and modern Brazilian nation. Not only was a capital finally built in Brazil’s central plateau, but also the very architectural and urban form of Brasilia is today legally protected in perpetuity and on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage sites. As a companion to the article, the reader can consult the website pilotPlan, a searchable digital atlas that illustrates the urban and architectural evolution of Brasilia, as it existed and as it was imagined.

Corpus Synodalium (March 2021) - Archiving Dossier Narrative

Corpus Synodalium is a multi-year collaborative project (2016-) to compile a repertory of local ecclesiastical legislation (principally diocesan statutes and provincial canons) produced in Latin Christendom from 1200-1500, and to facilitate their study through the production of a corpus of full-text transcriptions. The project website allows users to explore and compare these texts using a variety of simple text analysis tools (including fuzzy and faceted searches, collocation, and time series). Users can also export search results to the first-ever digital atlas of medieval European dioceses and ecclesiastical provinces, in order to look for spatial patterns within the text corpus. The project was led by Rowan Dorin (History Department, Stanford University), with the support of a team of collaborators in the United States and Europe.

Mapping Mexican COVID-19 vulnerability at municipal scale

This paper presents an interactive map related to the population vulnerability concerning COVID-19 at the municipal level for Mexico. A vulnerability index was modeled using seven socioeconomic/sociodemographic variables and one health-care related variable, all with relevance to a health contingency such as COVID-19. The resulting indicator expresses the municipal vulnerability to face a sanitary crisis such as COVID-19 in five categories. Data for each of the eight variables were first categorized in quintiles. A pairwise comparison matrix was used to weight these variables in relation to their estimated relevance for the municipal vulnerability. With respect to COVID-19 vulnerability, Mexican municipalities show the following results: 1.6% (very low), 18.7% (low), 46.6% (medium), 24.6% (high), 8.5% (very high). The map forms part of a dashboard providing daily information on the development of the pandemic in Mexico, and is complemented by a digital atlas visualizing information for each variable of the indicator.