GIS applications for knowledge and preservation of Hierapolis of Phrygia site

Lately, Geographic Information Systems are increasingly exploited in archaeological studies or, generally, in projects aimed to the preservation of cultural heritage. Among the large number of reasons that make GIS a suitable tool to manage this kind of programs, at once it’s possible to identify two main topics for this achievement. The first one concerns the high capacities of GIS to enable advanced storage, representation and management of spatial data, connecting them to collections of different nature data (archaeological, architectural, historical, etc.); these archives can be suitably set and managed in several semantic levels with a spatial reference, overlaying topogaphic maps. The second order of reasons is connected with present development of geographic mapping: the improvements in acquisition, processing, management and digital representation metodologies request proper tools, in order to make new mapping products usable and widespread. The recent growth of satellite images analyses and aerial photograms interpretation have in fact substantial role in cultural heritage documentation, supporting objectives of modern Archaeology in spotting areas of probable location of archaeological sites or finds. The designed GIS of Hierapolis, whose carrying out is going on, can based itself on a huge amount of metric data relating monuments and diggings, collected during the last years thanks to topographic and photogrammetric surveys. Besides close range surveys aimed to document architectural structures and ruins, always originating vectorial representation, a complete digital site map at the urban scale 1:1000 has been accomplished. The purpose to offer the chance of global data managing of city environment and architectural structures (scientists of different disciplines register and store data covering the most diverse aspects of research) have to be founded upon very precise choices about (geo)graphical database organization, mainly applied to proper arrangements of multiscale and multidisciplinary data. This paper mostly presents our efforts and experiences to achieve this last object.