It's incredible seeing how
everything kind of ties
together in one region.
I find it really striking
to walk around a corner
and come across an ancient Roman
site, and then look to the left
and see an old volcano.
It's all here.
We are in the town of
Pozzuoli, which is located
nearby the city of Naples.
This is a volcanic
province in southern Italy.
It's a really cool
place to study
the interaction of
geology, Roman archeology,
and volcanology.
The students are
working in groups
to choose a different site,
be that an archaeological site
or a volcano.
We fly the drone
over these sites,
and it captures images at
certain intervals along a kind
of set flight path.
And then we have this
extremely impressive software.
And with a bunch of
photos the software
identifies common points, but
taken from different angles.
And then stitching
together all the photos,
creates a photo-realistic
three dimensional model.
We can actually take accurate
measurements of the areas.
We have the area right in front
of our eyes at that point.
We can get much more
of a precise sense
of the size of the pillars
in the marketplace,
and Pozzuoli, or the width of
the crater of Mount Vesuvius.
You can zoom in and
understand things
that would be inaccessible
to us at the site,
and I think that's
especially important
because these sites are ancient
and fragile and delicate.
We get to preserve them in
kind of a new way using that 3D
mapping drone technology.
There are people from all
sorts of different backgrounds.
There is, you know, multiple
engineering students
like myself.
There's also students
who study classics,
and students to study
chemistry, and students who
study geology and geophysics.
I think it's really,
really powerful
to be in an
environment where you
can combine your skills and
your different perspectives,
and then you get much more
diverse and creative solutions.
There is, in fact, large
amounts of tectonic and volcanic
activity in the area
surrounding this town.
It has all of these
natural phenomenon going on
under and around
it, including Mount
Vesuvius and the Caldeira,
that spans this whole area.
This has been one of the larger
challenges for the people
who are living in this area who
have had to evacuate, or even
in more ancient history when
all of the people in towns
like Herculaneum and
Pompeii were then
killed due to the eruption.
I grew up here and
I was a teenager
when, in 1982, this
town was evacuated
for at least two
years because the fear
of an impending eruption.
The volcanoes in this
region, particularly,
spew ash and this
ash that they release
is one of the big things that
we're looking at because it
was used in Roman concrete.
When the Romans discovered
that mixing the pozzolanic ash
with water created
very, very strong rock,
they proceeded to export
this ash across the region.
It shows a huge intersection
between volcanic activity
and its impact on the
history of this region.
Today Roman concrete is
still of great interest
because, as we know, this
concrete is very durable.
So it's our interest to leverage
knowledge between geophysics,
archeology, and engineering to
make new sustainable materials.
For students, it's
very important
to be here because they
can establish connections
between what they study,
and books, and journals,
with the actual reality.
The history seems so much
more real when you're actually
there, and inspires all sorts
of intuitions and curiosity.
The reason we're so fascinated
with these amphitheaters
and these marketplaces is
because that human aspect,
that's our history.
Seeing those first hand
is, I think, the only way
to really understand.
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