Dynamics of natural and rural landscape in the Mediterranean basin (DYNAMED)

Overview

AR / VR Archival Registers Education / pedagogy Landscape reconstruction Maps Museum

The Mediterranean region has been shaped by human activity and maintained by traditional practices of land use for centuries or millennia. This has affected the distribution of plants and the landscape, which can be considered as part of the European cultural heritage. This project is about the rapid changes that have taken place Mediterranean natural and rural environment in the recent period (last 2 centuries) in which major socio-economic development greatly affected the ancient, traditional landscape and, in a broader sense, the cultural environment and the human perception of nature. The project coordinated by the Musa Centre aims to order and make available information, archive data, maps, which concern the dynamics of the natural and rural landscapes of the Mediterranean basin in relation to human activities and life strategies.
We will start from the description of the recent land use dynamics in 16 sites of the entire Mediterranean basin, with the aim of highlighting the human-nature-climate interactions and consequently understanding how much and how and at what scale anthropic actions can influence not only the landscape but also the climate, trade relations, the history of peoples. In this sense, the story of the Late Roman sites built, from the 3rd to the 5th century, for the defense of the Empire on the edge of the habitable world, in the middle of the desert, is exemplary. It is the case of the Umm al Dabadib site, a man-made Late Roman archaeological settlement built in the hostile environment of Egyptian western desert, studied (ERC Grant L.I.F.E.) in recent years by Corinna Rossi and her research team. The site of Umm al-Dabadib of about 10 sq km, presents a vast agricultural system served by a complex network of aqueducts and canals that will be reconstructed in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality environment connected to interact with a system dynamics model. The system will be hosted in the halls of the MUSA Centre of the University of Napoli Federico II.

Team

Centro MUSA University of Napoli Federico II – Prof. Stefano Mazzoleni, Dr. Antonello Migliozzi

University of Napoli Federico II – Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici – Prof. Antonella Ambrosio

Politecnico di Milano – Prof. Corinna Rossi

spinVector by Mare Engineering S.p.A. – Mr. Giovanni Caturano

Project partners