MONITORAGGIO DI SITI ARCHEOLOGICI DA SATELLITE UN METODO IBRIDO TRAMITE REMOTE SENSING,TECNICHE GIS E UN ALGORITMO DI RILEVAMENTO DELLA FORMA UTILIZZABILE SU IMMAGINI SAR

Abstract

Il metodo sviluppato nel quadro di un progetto finanziato dall'Agenzia Spaziale Europea per il monitoraggio automatico e l'identifi cazione di siti archeologici perduti o ancora da scoprire in
Egitto è stato ulteriormente migliorato tramite i dati disponibili da immagini radar di tipo SAR ad alta risoluzione in banda X dei satelliti Cosmo Sky-Med.

Advancement in automatic monitoring and detection of archaeological sites using a hybrid process of Remote Sensing, GIS techniques and a shape detection algorithm
The method developed in the frame of the project HORUS (Heritage Observation and Retrieval Under Sand funded by European Space Agency) for the automatic monitoring and identification of lost or undiscovered archaeological sites in Egypt has been improved and applied to the new available high resolution radar images by Cosmo Sky-Med satellites. The use of active high resolution active sensors enables continue monitoring of the target area with all wheather condition (day, night with any cloudy coverage) and Cosmo Sky-Med
satellites are mainly devoted to observe the "Mediterranean area ("Med in fact is for "Mediterranean”) where is the highest density of the Archaeological sites in the world. The method uses shape detection techniques on satellite imagery superposed in a GIS environment.
For an area of interest, the EO data available from various
satellites is pre-processed and from historical plans a shape fi le of the archaeological structure of interest is produced. A shape detectionalgorithm employing a shape matched operator is applied to the EO image to produce a detection image identifying the most probable location of the archaeological structure of interest. The shape-matched operator employed is the derivative of double exponential (DODE) operator. The fi nal product is a GIS data set assembled as a list of required features and layers, all converted and processed in the same Geographical Reference System. The article shows the most recent advancement using an enhanced version of the operator applied to high resolution X-band SAR images by Cosmo
Sky-Med.