Banchini, Giovanni 
  
The normalization phase represents the last chapter of the disaster story. Traditionally the cartographic product related 
to this phase has been the large scale, rigorously standardized product. But the production of this extremely important 
product, the basic tool to guide all reconstruction and restoration of the environment and all the more needed if the pre 
disaster cartography was poor, takes months to complete. And for the people affected by the disaster recovery times are 
always late. Again the orthophoto of the disaster area at the proper scale presents itself as the optimal tool to satisfy 
these needs. For the Sarno basin, color othophotos for all the disaster area, beyond those prepared for the immediate 
needs in near real time, became available before the end of May as an accellerated effort and part of the ongoing but 
nearly finished coverage of all of Italy with color digital orthophotos at the scale of 1:10 000 by the CGR. 
CONCLUSION 
Availability of up to date maps by civil defense organizations is essential to guide field operations and 
recovery planning following environmental disasters. Color aerial photography immediately after the event followed by 
the production of digital orthophotos from this or other taken soon thereafter, is today the best visual and metric areal 
documentation that can be summoned to help improve the consequences of the disaster. The existence of a well 
maintained archive of photogrammetric data is of much help to document preexisting conditions and to map them. 
Where appropriate, civil defense organizations should be made aware of the existence of the color digital 
orthophoto and a working linkage should be instituted by photogrammetric companies with them in order to share in the 
documentation and recovery efforts. 
  
112 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B7. Amsterdam 2000.