UNESCO World Heritage properties in changing and dynamic environments: change detection methods using optical and radar satellite data

Athos Agapiou

doi:10.1186/s40494-021-00542-z

Abstract

The article presents recent capabilities of active and passive earth observation sensors along with related processing image chains, for monitoring UNESCO World Heritage properties. Exceptional heritage sites and landscapes are found in dynamic environments, whereas both anthropogenic and natural changes are observed. The use of radar and optical satellite imageries can be used as a systematic observation tool for stakeholders, to map drastic or slowly driven landscape changes towards the better protection and management of these sites and their surrounding areas. The study presents the results from the analysis of the European Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite images over two broader areas in the Eastern Mediterranean basin that hold important UNESCO World Heritage properties. Initially, a recent strong earthquake of a 6.7 magnitude scale in the Aegean Sea is studied using radar Sentinel-1 images. These radar images were processed through the Hybrid Pluggable Processing Pipeline (HyP3) cloud platform for analyzing both significant changes of the VV (vertical transmit, vertical receive) and VH (vertical transmit, horizontal receive) backscattering signal as well as through an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) analysis. Then, long-term changes in Cyprus during the last two decades are monitored by a Sentinel-2 image compared to the European Corine Land Use Land Cover data of 2000. These changes are mapped after a supervised classification process using the random forest (RF) classifier. The overall results demonstrate that the recent developments of the space sector in all its segments (resolution of the sensors, the capacity to storage in the cloud, processing advancements and open-access datasets and tools) can be beneficial for monitoring UNESCO World Heritage properties.

Highlights

Based on the records, more than 1100 heritage sites are enlisted under the UNESCO World Heritage list, combining 869 cultural and 213 natural sites
This article aims to showcase some of the current potentials of the space sector for archaeological monitoring sites around the world, like those enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage monuments, through change detection techniques
The radar Sentinel-1 datasets were obtained through the Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) services [36], while the optical Sentinel-2 image was downloaded from the Copernicus Open Access Hub [37]

Summary

Introduction

More than 1100 heritage sites are enlisted under the UNESCO World Heritage list, combining 869 cultural and 213 natural sites. The role of earth observation for supporting cultural heritage management has been widely investigated in the recent past [15,16,17,18] Due to their capacity to map in a short time extensive region, earth observation sensors have attracted the interest of scholars as this is evidence from the relevant literature landscape. In their recent work of Luo et al [19] and Agapiou and Lysandrou [20], the relevant state-of-art regarding the use of remote sensing technology is presented. The use of optical and radar sensors have been explored for the documentation of looted areas in the conflicted zone of Syria [22,23,24]

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