Dottorato in STORIA, DISEGNO E RESTAURO DELL'ARCHITETTURA

Titolo della tesi: From the Integrated Survey of Architecture and Territory to its Representation. The Contribution of Radar Antenna in Data Acquisition

The introduction of open-access data repositories about Territory has highlighted the issue of organising surveys at different dimensional scales in a systemic view. It is common practice to integrate data such as satellite photographs and DEMs (Digital Elevation Models) with other data obtained from terrestrial laser scanning, photogrammetry, topography and so on. In the Italian Scientific Disciplinary Area for Civil Engineering and Architecture SSD ICAR/17, the study of applications of optical radiation is an established fact, but much rarer is the discussion about the use of radio waves. In recent years, imaging radars (Radio Detection And Ranging), active sensors based on the recording of microwave energy pulses emitted by them and then reflected by bodies in their field of action, have become widespread. In relation to the purposes of integrated surveying, the overriding peculiarities of radar imaging are: A) the coherence of radar radiation, since microwaves are emitted in phase and then their phase shift is registered during reception; B) the different interactions between the target and the radar beam that scans it, depending on the microwave frequency band used and polarisation; C) the possibility of using these sensors even in total absence of light and in most atmospheric conditions; D) the execution of progressively more complex processing, starting from the two-dimensional images derived from the scans, to obtain DEMs or even point clouds. In this research: 1) we critically analyse methods for recording and processing radar images useful for integrated surveying of Territory and Architecture; 2) we employ some of these methods in two case studies concerning historical military architecture, in order to verify their effectiveness and precision; 3) we study representation apparatuses suitable for the restitution of radar data.