3D-GIS as a platform for visual analysis: Investigating a Pompeian house

• The work presents an innovative framework to perform visual analysis in an ancient built space.
• A 3D GIS-based approach is tested to make an assessment of the visual impact of selected categories of objects.
• A vector line-of-sight analysis is performed in a “fully-3D” environment.
• A wall inscription and a fresco in a Pompeian house are analyzed through the use of this work pipeline.
• Some relevant advances in the domain of formal visibility methods applied to the study of the ancient space are discussed.

The aim of the present work is to introduce an innovative framework for employing 3D-GIS as an exploratory platform to perform visual analysis. Such a methodology is aimed at detecting patterns of visibility to simulate the past human perception of specific categories of artifacts placed inside a virtually reconstructed three-dimensional space. As a case study, the house of Caecilius Iucundus in Pompeii (regio V, insula 1, entrances 23 and 26) was chosen and two media of visual communication, a painting and a graffito were tested to make an assessment of their visual impact on hypothetical observers. The approach consists of a vector-based line-of-sight (LOS) analysis, now available as an integral component of the 3D-analyst toolkit of the ESRI ArcGIS 10.x software package. This toolkit allowed us to perform the entire process inside a GIS environment, without splitting the tasks among different software platforms.It was thus possible to detect a significant difference in terms of visibility among the observed objects.