Earth Observation for Cultural and Natural Heritage
The thematic of EO and Heritage is getting more and more attention worldwide. The European Space Agency (ESA) is encouraging a series of activities to inform the space industry about the potential market that the thematic of EO for Heritage has. The European Commission programme Copernicus is also implementing a series of related activities.
From 2005 to 2015 the topic of Earth Observation and Heritage was extremely successful at the EARSeL Symposia. Each time there was a dedicated session to Heritage with a large number of attendees. Unfortunately, people changed and the thematic of Heritage was not more included in the EARSeL Symposia. Therefore, it is important to reactivate the thematic of EO and Heritage and to show to the community that EARSeL is also promoting research on this important thematic.
Natural Heritage: The conservation of natural heritage refers to the protection, care, management and maintenance of ecosystems, habitats, wildlife species and populations, within or outside of their natural environments, in order to safeguard the natural conditions for their long-term permanence.
Cultural Heritage: The conservation of cultural heritage refers to the measures taken to preserve the main values of such a cultural heritage while strengthening transmission of its significant heritage messages and values. In the domain of cultural property, the aim of conservation is to maintain the physical and cultural characteristics of the object to ensure that its value is not diminished and that it will outlive our limited time span.
Threats: Climate change, earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters; pollution, poaching, uncontrolled urbanization, and unchecked tourist development; armed conflict and war, pose major threats to both, cultural and natural heritage sites. Ongoing monitoring of these heritage sites is therefore necessary. However, doing it on-site becomes costly and sometimes difficult since the heritage site might be in an area of difficult access.
The valuable support of Earth Observation: Current advancements in Earth Observation (EO) science and technology allow capturing data for heritage sites with an extremely convenient frequency. The continuous evolution of satellite image resolution now allows detailed monitoring of cultural heritage sites. A large amount of satellite data information is now freely available. The EC Copernicus Programme provides not only free satellite images but also a series of services and associated tools that greatly facilitate the processing of all satellite data. High-resolution satellite images from the private sector, although they come at a certain price, are well-suited to support heritage monitoring activities. In addition, the current emerging technology of drones with various sensors enables the acquisition of extremely high-resolution data for heritage sites.
Many other factors have an effect on our cultural heritage and need to be monitored in order to preserve it: natural phenomena, such as subsidence and ground motion, and anthropic ones such as urban sprawl and climate change. Earth Observation (EO) data, in this regard, can help by monitoring the degradation of sites, the level of air pollution in the surrounding areas, the coastal erosion or it can help in the discovery of heritage hidden below the ground’s surface and revealing of lost landscapes. EO can also provide benefits in terms of risk assessment through the use of change maps, that track the changes occurring within an area of interest during a certain period.
Techniques to capture data for heritage are basically of two types. Image-based data, supported by photogrammetry, can obtain the corresponding point cloud and use such information to create accurate 3D models. There are also devices that can obtain the point cloud directly (laser scanning, LiDAR, etc.). The tools used for processing heritage data are extremely similar to the tools used for satellite image processing. Therefore, the EO industry, with its current expertise and know-how, has enormous potential to assist heritage related activities. On the other side, not all heritage authorities are aware of the enormous potential and advantages that Earth Observation (all sensors included) can provide to heritage sites.
The main purpose of the session is to bring together state-of-the-art actors in EO for heritage in order to present their current advancements on using EO and associated remote sensing techniques (e.g. LiDAR, UAVs, Laser scanners, etc.).
List of topics
We are looking for research and applied research about heritage by using data from sensors of: Satellite, airborne, UAVs, local scanners, etc. These might include the following themes:
- Earth observation for heritage
- Monitoring protected areas with Earth Observation
- Monitoring cultural landscapes
- EO to assess heritage risks: flooding, forest fires, sea level raise, etc
- Use of EO to assess climate change effects on heritage
- Geomatics applications for heritage
- Remote sensing for archaeology
- LiDAR and cultural heritage
- Heritage – terrain incidence – SAR technologies
- Copernicus applications for heritage
- Education on the use of geotechnologies for heritage and protected areas
- Airborne sensors and associated heritage applications
- Local laser scanning of cultural monuments; 3D modelling; Virtual immersion; Virtual tours, etc.
Organisers
Jolanda Patruno – jolanda.patruno (at) esa.int
Mario Hernandez – Mariohernandezvaldes (at) gmail.com