3D Digitization and Web Publishing of an ISMAR Cartographic Heritage: Historical Maps of Venice Lagoon

Recently a collection of ancient maps was found in the Institute of Marine Sciences of CNR in Venice. The collection includes maps, perspective views, pilot books and ancient manuscripts: this work took into account a selection of maps and documents representing the Venice Lagoon and the Adriatic coast. The first part of this research focused on the application of a scientific method for digital acquisition of historical cartography; thanks to the Geomatic tools and especially to digital photogrammetry it is possible to acquire metric, semantic and symbolic information and also the three-dimensional shape of the geometrical support to correct the deformations occurred over time. In order to allow historical and morphological analysis of the Venice Lagoon, one of the main goals of this research will be the creation of a digital catalogue on a web-gis platform with all the ancient maps acquired. In this way it will be possible to query and to overlap the maps in an interactive way, allowing studies and comparisons with the more recent cartography. The applied procedure of recovery and valorization of historical cartography is divided into three different phases: acquisition, georeferencing and data elaboration of maps in a digital environment. This research underlines the application of a scientific procedure for the conservation and valorization of the historical Cartographic Heritage.