Capitalize on the Experience of the ATHENA Project for Cultural Heritage for the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence for the Benefit of the East Med Region

Abstract

The “ATHENA” H2020 Twinning project seeks to establish a Center of Excellence in the field of Remote Sensing for Cultural Heritage through the development of an enhanced knowledge base and innovative methods in the areas of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage. This paper presents an overview of the ATHENA twinning project as well a review of the remote sensing in archaeology. The ATHENA stakeholder hub is presented through a WEBGIS platform. The importance of capitalizing on the experience of running the ATHENA project for the benefit of the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (ECoE) is explained. In recent years, Earth Observation (EO) techniques have been used extensively for archaeological and cultural heritage applications, which makes the ECoE a key player in EO activities in the Eastern Meditteranean region. The different areas that are under the umbrella of the remote sensing in archaeology sector are categorized based on the review findings. Finally, how Earth observation and remote sensing is spread out through research activities in the Eastern Meditteranean region from 1998 to 2018 is presented based on the Scopus engine.