CORE collaboration contributes to groundbreaking mapping of the Roman road network and new article in Nature Scientific Data

A new article in Nature Scientific Data marks an exciting milestone for researchers at Aarhus University and their international collaborators. The publication is the result of a truly collaborative effort between CORE colleagues at the Social Resilience Lab (SRL) and the Center for Humanities Computing (CHC).

Published on 6 November, the dataset is accompanied by Itiner-e – an interactive online platform that increases the known length of the Roman Empire’s road system by more than 100,000 kilometres. Co-author and PI of SRL, Tom Brughmans, describes it as a “Google Maps for Roman roads,” and it is already receiving massive attention. So much so that the servers are struggling to keep up.

“Following Thursday’s press release, interest has been overwhelming, with the map being viewed around 100,000 times in just the first 24 hours,” says CHC developer Peter Vahlstrup, who built the platform.

The groundbreaking work highlights the power of combining social and computational perspectives – an approach at the heart of the CORE collective, where interdisciplinary collaboration drives innovation and best practice.

The publication and the new results are the outcome of a collaboration between an international research team from Aarhus University and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Find the paper here:
de Soto, P., Pažout, A., Brughmans, T. et al. Itiner-e: A high-resolution dataset of roads of the Roman Empire. Sci Data 12, 1731 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-025-06140-z