WHERE MONITORAGGIO DI SITI ARCHEOLOGICI DA SATELLITE

Abstract

Un sistema per il monitoraggio dei siti classiï¬ cati patrimonio dell'umanità  dall'UNESCO in ambito urbano basato sull'osservazione della Terra dallo spazio. Utilizzando e processando le immagini satellitari ad alta risoluzione, offerte dalla costellazione Cosmo Sky-Med, è possibile monitorare in tempo reale il sito sotto osservazione, con particolare riguardo all'impatto antropico, meteoclimatico e strutturale.

AUTOMATIC MONITORING OF WORLD HERITAGE UNESCO SITES BY USING AND PROCESSING SATELLITE IMAGERY

Cosmo Sky-Med satellites offer active high resolution radar images; they are mainly devoted to observe the Mediterranean area, where is the highest density of archaeological sites in the world. Satellite detection techniques can therefore be used for automatic monitoring of archaeological sites. A speciï¬ c case discussed in this paper is the project WHERE, that focuses on the monitoring of World Heritage UNESCO sites located in urban areas, by using and processing satellite imagery. Monitoring will concern three differ-ent elements: anthropic (human impact on the site and the environment), climatic (environmental and climatic impact on monuments) and geotechni-cal/structural (terrain and architectural structures deformation) and will employ three distinct chains of data processing, namely change detection, microclimate and interferometry. Information obtained is then superposed in a GIS/WebGIS environment. Such service is based on a continuous moni-toring (with all weather conditions) of archaeological sites, that enables a series of light restoration interventions, instead of traditional heavy ones that have a higher economical expense and not always ensure Cultural Her-itage preservation.