Tool development for digital reconstruction: A framework for a database of historic Roman construction materials

Despite the fact that digital reconstructions of historic structures and sites are a rich asset for understanding both humanistic and scientific facets of the past, tools to ease the generation of accurate models are lacking. This work presents an interactive database of historic Roman construction materials which was designed specifically for the purposes of aiding in digital reconstructions. For the scope of this work, only ancient Roman timber and stone construction materials were agglomerated. However, the framework for the database was constructed so that it could be easily expanded to other geographic locations, materials, and time periods. Based on the results of a survey, the user interface and schema for the database were developed. The information in the database can be searched in two main ways: (1) a user can click on an interactive geographic map to find pertinent materials if they know their location and (2) a user can search for where a material was found based on its name. Additionally, the database was generated in a flexible manner so that new information can be added by registered users. This promotes further development of the database and encourages future tools for digital reconstruction to be designed in a similarly dynamic manner. (C) 2019 Les Auteurs. Publie par Elsevier Masson SAS. Cet article est publie en Open Access sous licence CC BY-NC-ND (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).