The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives: Monitoring Cultural Heritage in Syria and Northern Iraq by Geospatial Imagery

Abstract

The American Schools of Oriental Research Cultural Heritage Initiatives (ASOR CHI) continues to address the cultural heritage crisis in Syria and Northern Iraq by: (1) monitoring, reporting, and fact-finding; (2) promoting global awareness; and (3) conducting emergency response projects and developing post-conflict rehabilitation plans. As part of this mission, ASOR CHI, through a public–government collaboration with the United States of America (US) Department of State, has been provided with access to hundreds of thousands of satellite images, some within 24 h of the image being taken, in order to assess reports of damage to cultural heritage sites, to discover unreported damage, and to evaluate the impacts of such incidents. This work is being done across an inventory of over 13,000 cultural heritage sites in the affected regions. The available dataset of satellite imagery is significantly larger than the scales that geospatial specialists within archaeology have dealt with in the past. This has necessitated a rethinking of how the project uses satellite imagery and how ASOR CHI and future projects can more effectively undertake the important work of cultural heritage monitoring and damage assessment.

Keywords

• endangered cultural heritage
• remote sensing
• large dataset
• crowd-sourcing information
• condition assessment
• real-time processing
• Syria
• Iraq
• conflict
• Nimrud
• Palmyra
• Mosul