In 2006 we started a project for the reconstruction using GIS technology of the Italian Army operations in the Russia Campaign (1941-1943). The studied area covers 15 states with an extension of 102° in longitude and 28° in latitude. The project has two major goals: to identify the places linked to troops displacement, to major battles and to retreat phases; to identify the military cemeteries and the Prisoners-of-War camps to represent troops displacement and movements in a cartographic environment; to develop a unique tool for management and querying all the geographic information linked to the events. As a base level for the representation of data and cartography a Landsat 5TM mosaic, taken in summer 1984, has been used. Satellite images have been treated in order to enhance the land features, with particular regard to hydrography, road and railway network, and inhabited places. All these elements were essential in order to link the information extracted from the references to the territory. Collected data were extremely heterogeneous: the majority of information has been extracted from more than 150 books and the available maps, drawings and schemas, with a scale ranging from 1:100.000 to 1:300.000. Moreover 247 soviet maps, at different scale, ranging from 1:100.000, to 1:1.000.000, were downloaded, georeferenced and used as cartographic layer, to validate and integrate information coming from books and to identify relevant places. When missing in the sources, geographical coordinates have been provided to all elements. The GIS has been developed using open source software (QGIS); all the available information has been collected into different thematic layers. A 1943 geological map was compared to the satellite images and to cartography in order to analyse the events in the deployment area in relation to the land features. Names of cities, villages, rivers, etc. were written in several different ways, depending on sources and due to the different transcription from the original Russian or Ukrainian names. A "rollback" work was thus necessary in order to collect all the different versions, identify Cyrillic name and Romanize it according to the rules of the Working Group on Romanization Systems of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN). More than 700 places have been stored into a database. Starting from this proper geographic base, vectorial layers were created. Actually, point layers have been generated from the geodatabase while line and polygon layers have been manually generated by digitalisation. Vectors were thematically clustered depending on the geographical or historical aspects: hydrography, relevant places, railroads, deployment of troops, prisoner-of-war camps, military retreats, etc. Starting from the GIS project, a WebGIS was developed and is accessible at http://webgis.iia.cnr.it/CampagnadiRussia/. The Russian Campaign WebGIS was implemented through MapServer for Windows - MS4W based on the Apache HTTP Server version 2.2.8 that ensures good data interoperability and flexible tools that can be customised to meet user needs. As a MapServer PHP/MapScript framework, p.mapper 3.2 version, was chosen.
Development of a GIS and a webGIS for the reconstruction of the Italian Army operations during the Russia Campaign (1941-1943)
Plini P;Di Franco S;De Santis V;Salvatori R
2009
Abstract
In 2006 we started a project for the reconstruction using GIS technology of the Italian Army operations in the Russia Campaign (1941-1943). The studied area covers 15 states with an extension of 102° in longitude and 28° in latitude. The project has two major goals: to identify the places linked to troops displacement, to major battles and to retreat phases; to identify the military cemeteries and the Prisoners-of-War camps to represent troops displacement and movements in a cartographic environment; to develop a unique tool for management and querying all the geographic information linked to the events. As a base level for the representation of data and cartography a Landsat 5TM mosaic, taken in summer 1984, has been used. Satellite images have been treated in order to enhance the land features, with particular regard to hydrography, road and railway network, and inhabited places. All these elements were essential in order to link the information extracted from the references to the territory. Collected data were extremely heterogeneous: the majority of information has been extracted from more than 150 books and the available maps, drawings and schemas, with a scale ranging from 1:100.000 to 1:300.000. Moreover 247 soviet maps, at different scale, ranging from 1:100.000, to 1:1.000.000, were downloaded, georeferenced and used as cartographic layer, to validate and integrate information coming from books and to identify relevant places. When missing in the sources, geographical coordinates have been provided to all elements. The GIS has been developed using open source software (QGIS); all the available information has been collected into different thematic layers. A 1943 geological map was compared to the satellite images and to cartography in order to analyse the events in the deployment area in relation to the land features. Names of cities, villages, rivers, etc. were written in several different ways, depending on sources and due to the different transcription from the original Russian or Ukrainian names. A "rollback" work was thus necessary in order to collect all the different versions, identify Cyrillic name and Romanize it according to the rules of the Working Group on Romanization Systems of the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN). More than 700 places have been stored into a database. Starting from this proper geographic base, vectorial layers were created. Actually, point layers have been generated from the geodatabase while line and polygon layers have been manually generated by digitalisation. Vectors were thematically clustered depending on the geographical or historical aspects: hydrography, relevant places, railroads, deployment of troops, prisoner-of-war camps, military retreats, etc. Starting from the GIS project, a WebGIS was developed and is accessible at http://webgis.iia.cnr.it/CampagnadiRussia/. The Russian Campaign WebGIS was implemented through MapServer for Windows - MS4W based on the Apache HTTP Server version 2.2.8 that ensures good data interoperability and flexible tools that can be customised to meet user needs. As a MapServer PHP/MapScript framework, p.mapper 3.2 version, was chosen.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
