Abstract

JODE purposes to deliver international readers with high quality peer-reviewed academic articles on a wide variety of issues related to open and distance learning, in areas such as technology-assisted learning, computer based training, computer-aided instruction or computer assisted instruction, internet-based training, web-based training, online training, virtual training, virtual learning environments, m-learning, digital education, education on social networking, massive online open courses, game-based learning, active learning, content design, e-assessment, mobile applications, e-video, the quality of open and distance education and accreditation etc. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

Earthquakes are of interest to geologists and physical geographers, yet rarely attract historical geographers’ attention. This paper uses contrasting representations of the Buildwas, Shropshire, ‘earthquake’ of 1773 to reconstruct the course of the event and its immediate aftermath. The contemporary mapping of the scene records the changes in the physical landscape, with the hillside slippage blocking the River Severn, a vital inland navigation route, forcing a new channel to be cut. This paper examines the role of Reverend John Fletcher, a prominent theologian and leading figure in the Methodist movement, who preached on the site immediately following the event drawing Biblical parallels from a providentialist perspective. However, Fletcher was the epitome of an eighteenth-century ‘clerical naturalist’ and his account provides equal attention to the moral and physical causes of the event, including numerous personal testimonies. Reviewing the evidence and its interpretation, this paper questions why contemporaries who debated the precise causes referred to it as an ‘earthquake’, or alternatively a landslip, contextualising their discussions in the wider intellectual movement of the Enlightenment and debates about the relationship between ‘science’ and ‘religion’. It shows how this local event was compared with other well documented earthquakes at London and Lisbon in 1750 and 1755 respectively, influencing how contemporaries understood what happened at Buildwas. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that it was not an ‘earthquake’, but rather a landslip following a period of prolonged precipitation combined with high river levels which probably undermined the slope.

Abstract

North- West England was the site of Britain's first canal and of one of the last true canal warehouses. The Duke's Warehouse in the Castlefield Canal Basin in Manchester was the first canal warehouse to have the classic design features of internal canal arms, multi-storeys, split level\\ud loading, terracing and water powered hoists, and was built between 1769 and 1771. The Great Northern Warehouse, in the centre of Manchester, was the last of the monumental road, rail and canal interchanges to be built in the Victorian period. Finished in 1898, it marked the close of the canal warehouse tradition and the beginning of motorised road transport storage. Between the two buildings were nearly 130 years of innovation and change. With at least 58\\ud surviving canal warehouses across the region, from Kendal in the north to Bunbury in the south, North- West England contains one of the largest, and most important, groups of canal warehouses in Europe (Figures 1 and 2). As general purpose redistribution centres they were a vital element in feeding the rapidly growing industrial urban populations of the region. Furthermore, their design influenced the building of the first railway warehouses, and later the textile warehouse, and although the canals were superseded by the railway, the canal warehouse remained an important element of the transport economy until the arrival of road haulage in the 1920s. This paper is based upon research undertaken by the author in 2000 and 2001 as part of the\\ud Tameside Archaeological Survey.

Abstract

The paper describes a color enhanced processing system - applied as case study on an artifact of the Pompeii archaeological area - developed in order to enhance different techniques for reality-based 3D models construction and visualization of archaeological artifacts. This processing allows rendering reflectance properties with perceptual fidelity on a consumer display and presents two main improvements over existing techniques: a. the color definition of the archaeological artifacts; b. the comparison between the range-based and photogrammetry-based pipelines to understand the limits of use and suitability to specific objects. Document type: Article

Abstract

The earthquake is a serious risk factor for archaeological heritage and, especially in this thematic area, the preventive protection assumes a strategic importance due to the lack of purpose that a reconstructive intervention would produce. However, the multiple problems of conservation and enhancement of the archeological heritage make the planning of damage mitigation complex, according to the criteria adopted for historical architecture. From the evolutionary framework of the sectoral regulations in Italy emerges a generic extension of the provisions for specific architectural monuments to the archaeological ones, in which the absence of connections or their intrinsic weakness, if any, increases their vulnerability. Currently, it is clear that the absence of a specific "functional connotation" of ruins, apart from the visit one, places these contexts on the margin of the most recent regulations reconsiderations. Indeed, the current Linee Guida Mibact 2011 (Mibact Guidelines 2011) introduce a rapid evaluation methodology on a territorial scale (LV1) which does not consider the archaeological structures. The paper proposes a rapid assessment method for the archaeological seismic vulnerability, which tries to connect the knowledge system with the analytical result on a territorial scale. This approach, based on a hierarchical system identification of structural 'morphos-types', is developed with applications conducted on the Roman Forum structures. Specifically, the attention is focused on the ruins constituted by walls without connections, whose structural behaviour, far from the global one, can be assimilated to a 'macro-element'. The seismic risk assessment is set according to the Carta del Rischio (the Risk Map) system methodology. This method introduces an algorithm for calculating structural vulnerability able to grasp the constructive and conservative specificities that influence the structural behaviour of the archaeological pre-existences.

Abstract

In this paper, a series of topics, concerning acquisition, communication, and the analysis of buildings will be discussed. In particular, a strategy aimed at exploiting the visual potentials of reality-based models, will be described inside render engines, real-time applications, as well as their role for the production of conventional drawing for documenting and studying built heritage. This methodology is inspired by pipelines coming from computer-generated imagery (CGI) and the video game industry: areas of research that are progressively showing an increasing interest towards the world of photogrammetry remote sensing, in particular for the new possibilities offered by Structure from Motion (SfM)/Multi View Stereo (MVS) in terms of automatic texturing of complex shapes. Quad-dominant remeshing, displaced subdivision surfaces, and accurate interactive/ automatic parametrization are the main points of this workflow, whose final goal is the achievement of multipurpose models, which are capable to comply with graphic codes of traditional survey, as well as semantic enrichment, and, last but not least, data compression/portability and texture reliability under different lighting conditions.

Abstract

La Arqueología es la disciplina que estudia los restos materiales de pasado. Es una disciplina histórica tanto por el tipo de preguntas que plantea como por los medios que utiliza para responderlas. Es una ciencia en la medida en que aplica el método científico: se recurre a la observación, la inducción, la comparación, se generan hipótesis y se contrastan. Lo que da a la Arqueología contemporánea su carácter científico es el uso de un sistema de registro que identifica y describe no sólo los hallazgos, muebles o inmuebles, sino también los depósitos estratificados en los que se encuentran esos hallazgos. Esto permite datar unos y otros. Es lo que se conoce como “método arqueológico”, y de ahí la expresión “excavar con metodología arqueológica”. 

Aquí nos interesan las actuaciones arqueológicas en las que las estructuras construidas, su devenir en el tiempo, constituyen el grueso de la evidencia a estudiar, con vistas a su restauración y puesta en valor. Se discutirá en qué consiste una excavación arqueológica, por qué forma parte esencial de cualquier intervención de restauración, y qué herramientas conceptuales puede aportar al proceso de conocimiento del objeto sobre el que se interviene.