Algorithmic Identification of Looted Archaeological Sites from Space

Bowen, Elijah F. W.; Tofel, B.; Parcak, Sarah; Granger, Richard

doi:10.3389/fict.2017.00004

Cited by 19 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The project has undertaken initial change identification for incidents such as looting, bomb damage, and collapsed heritage, with the primary goal of prioritizing new images for analysts' attention based on the likelihood that a new image contains evidence of such events. This would help to mitigate the bottleneck created by the quantity of imagery in relation to the numbers of analysts (limited by cost factors) and is in line with similar work being undertaken by archaeologists elsewhere in the world [38][39][40].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives: Monitoring Cultural Heritage in Syria and Northern Iraq by Geospatial Imagery

Danti¹,

Branting

2017

Geosciences

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Abstract:The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives (ASOR CHI) continues to address the cultural heritage crisis in Syria and Northern Iraq by: (1) monitoring, reporting, and fact-finding; (2) promoting global awareness; and (3) conducting emergency response projects and developing post-conflict rehabilitation plans. As part of this mission, ASOR CHI, through a public-government collaboration with the United States of America (US) Department of State, has been provided with access to hundreds of thousands of satellite images, some within 24 h of the image being taken, in order to assess reports of damage to cultural heritage sites, to discover unreported damage, and to evaluate the impacts of such incidents. This work is being done across an inventory of over 13,000 cultural heritage sites in the affected regions. The available dataset of satellite imagery is significantly larger than the scales that geospatial specialists within archaeology have dealt with in the past. This has necessitated a rethinking of how the project uses satellite imagery and how ASOR CHI and future projects can more effectively undertake the important work of cultural heritage monitoring and damage assessment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives: Monitoring Cultural Heritage in Syria and Northern Iraq by Geospatial Imagery

Danti¹,

Branting

2017

Geosciences

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“…Training data that are built according to the above-mentioned criteria (and specifically the distinctiveness of the pattern from other unrelated objects) should help to reduce the occurrence of false positive errors and mismatching. Recent publications presenting the first attempts of automation on feature detection in VHR multi-spectral satellite images have addressed this technical requirement by proposing algorithms searching for repeated featural motifs and building upon existing methods of supervised classification and unsupervised localization [34]. Although these methods have been applied at VHR level, they outline one of the possible directions along which to develop methods suited for HR time series such as those provided by Sentinel-2.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Appraisal of Opportunities and Perspectives for the Systematic Condition Assessment of Heritage Sites with Copernicus Sentinel-2 High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery

Tapete

Cigna

2018

Remote Sensing

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Very high-resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery (≤5 m) is nowadays an established source of information to monitor cultural and archaeological heritage that is exposed to hazards and anthropogenic threats to their conservation, whereas few publications specifically investigate the role that regularly acquired images from high-resolution (HR) satellite sensors (5-30 m) may play in this application domain. This paper aims to appraise the potential of the multispectral constellation Sentinel-2 of the European Commission Earth observation programme Copernicus to detect prominent features and changes in heritage sites, during both ordinary times and crisis. We test the 10 m spatial resolution of the 3 visible spectral bands of Sentinel-2 for substantiation of single local events-that is, wall collapses in the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Old City of Aleppo (Syria)-and for hotspot mapping of recurrent incidents-that is, the archaeological looting in the archaeological site of Apamea (Syria). By screening long Sentinel-2 time series consisting of 114 images for Aleppo and 57 images for Apamea, we demonstrate that changes of textural properties and surface reflectance can be logged accurately in time and space and can be associated to events relevant for conservation. VHR imagery from Google Earth was used for the validation and identification of trends occurring prior to the Sentinel-2 launch. We also demonstrate how to exploit the Sentinel-2 short revisiting time (5 days) and large swath (290 km) for multi-temporal tracking of spatial patterns of urban sprawl across the cultural landscape of the World Heritage Site of Cyrene (Libya), and the three coastal ancient Greek sites of Tocra, Ptolemais, and Apollonia in Cyrenaica. With the future development of tailored machine learning approaches of feature extraction and pattern detection, Sentinel-2 can become extremely useful to screen wider regions with short revisiting times and to undertake comparative condition assessment analyses of different heritage sites.

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“…This is particularly evident in the optical domain, where methods are applied to different input satellite images (either multispectral, panchromatic or RGB) and different levels of pre-processing (e.g., pansharpened). Some authors work on panchromatic images (e.g., [55]), others pansharpen images before further analysis. Sometimes this choice seems to be site-specific and dependent on the peculiar characteristics of the satellite data used.…”

Section: Practices In Image Processing and Data Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some methods are developed with the purpose of a broader applicability across different sensors. This is the case of the method by [55]. In the SAR domain, refs.…”

Section: Practices In Image Processing and Data Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Detection of Archaeological Looting from Space: Methods, Achievements and Challenges

Tapete

Cigna

2019

Remote Sensing

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Illegal excavations in archaeological heritage sites (namely “looting”) are a global phenomenon. Satellite images are nowadays massively used by archaeologists to systematically document sites affected by looting. In parallel, remote sensing scientists are increasingly developing processing methods with a certain degree of automation to quantify looting using satellite imagery. To capture the state-of-the-art of this growing field of remote sensing, in this work 47 peer-reviewed research publications and grey literature are reviewed, accounting for: (i) the type of satellite data used, i.e., optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR); (ii) properties of looting features utilized as proxies for damage assessment (e.g., shape, morphology, spectral signature); (iii) image processing workflows; and (iv) rationale for validation. Several scholars studied looting even prior to the conflicts recently affecting the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Regardless of the method used for looting feature identification (either visual/manual, or with the aid of image processing), they preferred very high resolution (VHR) optical imagery, mainly black-and-white panchromatic, or pansharpened multispectral, whereas SAR is being used more recently by specialist image analysts only. Yet the full potential of VHR and high resolution (HR) multispectral information in optical imagery is to be exploited, with limited research studies testing spectral indices. To fill this gap, a range of looted sites across the MENA region are presented in this work, i.e., Lisht, Dashur, and Abusir el Malik (Egypt), and Tell Qarqur, Tell Jifar, Sergiopolis, Apamea, Dura Europos, and Tell Hizareen (Syria). The aim is to highlight: (i) the complementarity of HR multispectral data and VHR SAR with VHR optical imagery, (ii) usefulness of spectral profiles in the visible and near-infrared bands, and (iii) applicability of methods for multi-temporal change detection. Satellite data used for the demonstration include: HR multispectral imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 constellation, VHR X-band SAR data from the COSMO-SkyMed mission, VHR panchromatic and multispectral WorldView-2 imagery, and further VHR optical data acquired by GeoEye-1, IKONOS-2, QuickBird-2, and WorldView-3, available through Google Earth. Commonalities between the different image processing methods are examined, alongside a critical discussion about automation in looting assessment, current lack of common practices in image processing, achievements in managing the uncertainty in looting feature interpretation, and current needs for more dissemination and user uptake. Directions toward sharing and harmonization of methodologies are outlined, and some proposals are made with regard to the aspects that the community working with satellite images should consider, in order to define best practices of satellite-based looting assessment.

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Algorithmic Identification of Looted Archaeological Sites from Space

Cited by 19 publications

References 44 publications

The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives: Monitoring Cultural Heritage in Syria and Northern Iraq by Geospatial Imagery

The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives: Monitoring Cultural Heritage in Syria and Northern Iraq by Geospatial Imagery

Appraisal of Opportunities and Perspectives for the Systematic Condition Assessment of Heritage Sites with Copernicus Sentinel-2 High-Resolution Multispectral Imagery

Detection of Archaeological Looting from Space: Methods, Achievements and Challenges

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