From detection of underground archaeological relics to monitoring of World Heritage Sites in danger: ongoing research activities in the frame of the ATHENA twinning project
Date Issued
May 2017
Abstract
The “ATHENA” twinning project aims at establishing a Center of Excellence in the field of
Remote Sensing for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, through a cooperation between the
Remote Sensing Research Laboratory at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), the
Institute of Archaeological and Architectural Heritage of the National Research Council of
Italy (IBAM- CNR), and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). This paper focuses on the joint
research carried out in the first year by DLR and CUT. Different achieved results can be
ordered chronologically, according to the stage of exploitation for an archaeological site.
First of all, a site of archaeological interest must be discovered and defined: to aid in this
process, a quantitative ranking of spectral indices to identify buried archaeological relics in
hyperspectral images is proposed. Subsequently, information must be catalogued and
stored: in the frame of the ATHENA project, efforts have been made to organize the
information acquired with a spectrometer in laboratory on mosaics tesserae retrieved in
Cyprus in a coherent spectral library. Finally, heritage sites must be constantly monitored,
and this could be difficult for non-accessible areas such as conflict zones. For this purpose,
the first steps have been made towards the automatic detection of damages to cultural
heritage sites from space, based on texture descriptors in remotely sensed images.
Remote Sensing for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage, through a cooperation between the
Remote Sensing Research Laboratory at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), the
Institute of Archaeological and Architectural Heritage of the National Research Council of
Italy (IBAM- CNR), and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). This paper focuses on the joint
research carried out in the first year by DLR and CUT. Different achieved results can be
ordered chronologically, according to the stage of exploitation for an archaeological site.
First of all, a site of archaeological interest must be discovered and defined: to aid in this
process, a quantitative ranking of spectral indices to identify buried archaeological relics in
hyperspectral images is proposed. Subsequently, information must be catalogued and
stored: in the frame of the ATHENA project, efforts have been made to organize the
information acquired with a spectrometer in laboratory on mosaics tesserae retrieved in
Cyprus in a coherent spectral library. Finally, heritage sites must be constantly monitored,
and this could be difficult for non-accessible areas such as conflict zones. For this purpose,
the first steps have been made towards the automatic detection of damages to cultural
heritage sites from space, based on texture descriptors in remotely sensed images.
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
![Thumbnail Image]()
Name
03-ISRSE-Athena-DC.pdf
Size
2.74 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
11525a6311855f246c7a105debab5198
Name
2.2.07a-abstract-Cerra-ISRSE 2017.pdf
Size
182.75 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
da4b84bff4159c44970b893215a3fbe7