TerraMosana

Terra Mosana - The evolution of our territory told in 3D

The DIVA research group is involved as a partner of the Geomatics Unit in the TerraMosana project. Terra Mosana gathers 12 funded partners and 8 associated partners. The overall coordination of the project is ensured by Prof. Roland Billen and Prof. Pierre Hallot. Project description : This project is a collaboration between municipalities, heritage sites, museums, universities and citizens in order to reinforce Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR) tourism attractivity and shared identity feeling through the digital exploitation of its cultural heritage. This exploitation is carried out through digital narratives of the shared history of several cities from the EMR. They are be based on the development and the exploitation of 3D models of our past and present as well as coming evolutions of our archaeological and urban heritage through virtual reality and augmented reality realizations. Using these technologies favours data sharing and consequently helps to reinforce the cohesion amongst the Euregio Meuse-Rhine heritage sites while leading the cultural heritage promotion to the digital era. By insisting on the common features and by drawing the attention to other sites in the region, Terra Mosana triggers a latent interest and encourages the inhabitants and the visitors to embark on a visit of the Euregio cities promoting therefore a cross-border touristic mobility. In practice, the citizens and the tourists are presented with, on one hand, experiences staging the whole euregional territory in 3D and, on the other hand, storylines which are being set up on site through virtual and augmented reality technologies. This project is meant to be evolving and sustainable. Indeed, the incorporation of other 3D models and other devices into the system needs to be possible in order to enhance the experience offered. The project is also able to welcome new partners and particularly, citizens’ participations, which implies the development of a technical, legal and ethical framework. The implementation of such a project requires to take into consideration historical and sociological (what to say, in which context and for what purpose?), legal and economical (who owns the data, who can exploit them?) as well as technical aspects (how to acquire data, how to best visualise them, how to share and store them?). This requires the establishment of a sustainable cross-border network of experts (consisting of citizens, historians, sociologists, legal experts and ICT specialists). Moreover, this consortium makes it possible to reach the necessary balance between content production and the building of the technical platform while simultaneously developing the legal and ethical framework for this collaborative work. More info: https://www.terramosana.org/