La Sora scomparsa di fine '800

Abstract

The Earthquake of Marsica in 1915, whose centenary was remembered on 13th January 2015, destroyed almost completely the town of Sora (FR). The earthquake caused many victims and important damages to the artistic heritage: Lots of ancient buildings and churches were completely lost. The following reconstruction deeply modified the urban settlement of the town, which dated back to the 17th century. This study presents a virtual reconstruction of the town by means of information technologies and in particular of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). For this purpose, the cadastral map of 1876 has been digitalised in order to get the layers of data regarding buildings and walls; data which were incorporated in an ArcGis (ESRI) geodatabase. Each information has been georeferenzed considering all the points of the 1876 map which had not changed in comparison to the current layout. This information has been projected on orthophotos and on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and subsequently extruded according to heights which have been estimated from the photographic documentation of the time. Some of the most important buildings have been reconstructed with more accuracy than what was obtained by the only map extrusion, by adding details available from historical pictures. The final result might be further developed for a more detailed reconstruction extended to the whole town, by using for exemple CityEngine (ESRI), modeling softwares and a procedural modeling approach.