High-resolution satellite imagery for comprehensive monitoring of cultural heritage in conflict: Syria and Iraq methodology

Summary

The growing availability of high-resolution commercial satellite imagery provides unprecedented capabilities for monitoring events in conflict zones- areas that are often inaccessible through traditional methods. This capability is particularly needed when conflict creates long-term inaccessibility and multiple actors overlap in space and time, leading to conflicting accounts, and incomplete or inaccurate information. Proactive monitoring of cultural heritage sites, coupled with time-series historical analysis, can bring much needed clarity to these situations.

This presentation will discuss the methods and means by which the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Geospatial Technologies Project is monitoring sites across Syria and Iraq as a part of the National Science Foundation-funded project "Developing a Research Community and Capacity for the Study of Cultural Heritage in Conflict" in collaboration with the Penn Museum’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center and the Smithsonian Institution. The systematic monitoring currently underway identifies damage to cultural heritage sites and also documents and quantifies risk to sites. The difficulties encountered while conducting large-scale satellite imagery analysis will be discussed, from data storage and organization, to coordinating analysis. This paper includes methods used for the verification of analysis results, both via peer review and compilation of corroborating data sets.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Intentional destruction of cultural heritage: Evidence and responses in Syria and Iraq

Keywords

Spatial Coverage