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| An area being cleared after the discovery of a 2,500lb bomb in 1948. |
Between the years 1939-1945, the Allies were estimated to
have dropped 2,770,520 TONS of
ordinance on the Axis Powers. In Italy alone, air raids by the RAF and the
USAAF delivered approximately 1,000,000 bombs on Italy, 10% of which failed to
explode on impact. In this article, a group of surveyors created a new GIS
system that is purposed to mitigate the risk of civilians accidentally finding
and triggering any remaining Unexploded Ordinance (UXO).
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| USAAF B-24 Liberators over Ploieşti. |
As the article states, there were 32, 019 known bombs dropped on 271 targets in the province of Trento. 801 of these bombs had long-delay fuses, and constitute between 800-1200 UXOs still to be found. Unexploded munitions pose a great risk to all, and work projects have been delayed and entire areas evacuated due to the continued development of the region which has brought the civilian population closer to unmarked territory.
A conservative estimate of the amount of UXO buried in Italy
is about 25,000 bombs, provided that 3/4s of that number have already been
located and subsequently disposed of. The surveyors in this article were
affiliated with the UXB-Trento Project, a GIS-based initiative known as the
Geographical Information System GRASS. This technology is able to successfully detect
craters and/or man-made depressions by using unclassified war archives, flight
plans, and reconnaissance imagery to create accurate and detailed maps of the
areas which are most at-risk for a UXO event.
The group created this system by constructing a geo-spatial
database with created from images, news reports, and debriefings. Precise bomb
lists, coordinates of intended targets, mission descriptions, and results were
all factored in the software’s development. The resultant risk map has been
used repeatedly by the Civil Defense Department of Trento since its publication
in 2001, and has been an effective tool in mitigating the risks of UXOs.
Source:
Mapping the Risk of Unexploded Bombs from World War Two
Cesare Furlanello, Stefano Merler, Stefano Menegon, Eva Paoli, Steno Fontanari
ITC-IRST, Trento
I like that GIS can be used for more than just doing research. Instead of just displaying characteristics of the land, here GIS is used to for probability, to predict the locations of unexploded bombs. It's a great tool because it can take many different kinds of information from many different sources and bring it together in one format.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting use of GIS mapping. I know that we had lots of issues with unexploded munitions. The detonation rate of bombs is not the best and any country that has had a war with bombing will find this useful.
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