LiDAR and RGB airborne orthophotos coverage and visualization and recognition of archeological findings in Kephissos valley /Phokis

In 2016 the landscape archaeological program “Topographic investigations in the Kephissos valley (Phokis)” started as a joint collaboration of the DAI with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Fthiotida and Evrytania. The integrative collaborative program includes, besides archaeological investigations, aerial imagery (LiDAR, analysis of historical aerial photos), geophysical surveys and geomorphological investigations. In 2018, via a funding from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the whole area under consideration around Elateia, Tithorea and Modi (around 145 sq km) was covered with LiDAR and RGB airborne orthophotos, the largest LiDAR coverage of an area up to now in Greece.

The visualization, recognition and interpretation gave valuable information on new findings of human made structures (urban, fort, man-made and horizontal fields). The orthophotos for the complete AOI were generated after the exploitation of the LiDAR point clouds as the reference DTM. This exploitation maximizes the resulting accuracies as the measured LiDAR points provide the best Ground surface model available. The resulting orthoimages were combined to a merged orthomosaic and then tiled to the 500x500m map sheets. The resulting tiles orthomosaics and LiDAR point clouds were then combined to produce the final RGB-Coloured point clouds, coming again to 500x500m map sheet blocks.