Il potenziale informativo degli archivi di fotografia militare della Seconda Guerra Mondiale ai fini della protezione civile e dell'analisi del territorio Fotogrammetria, intelligenza artificiale e webGIS al servizio degli archivi fotografici

WWII aerial photo reconnaissance played a decisive role in the success of the Allied campaigns in Europe. Repeated aerial surveys provided information to monitor enemy lines, identify targets, plan attacks and assess damages inflicted by aerial bombing. Reconnaissance activity in the 1943-45 Italian campaign produced an awesome number of aerials, 883,005 of whom are kept today by ICCD-Aerofototeca Nazionale (AFN) in Rome. The often massive scale of bombing has left a lasting legacy across the landscape, as is shown by the problems in dealing with unexploded ordnance (UXO), still retrieved on a nearly daily basis. The AFN collection is a powerful, though still underdeveloped record of the landscape of wartime Italy and is essential for the plotting of UXO hazard maps. The article focuses on the main steps to be taken in order to exploit and share it.