Sentinel and Copernicus Contributing Missions in Support of World Heritage in Danger

Kurzfassung

The first European Earth Observation Copernicus satellites are active since 2014 and are providing full, open and free (FOF) information, extremely useful for research purposes. Such a big amount of data requires processing and, more importantly, alignment with local needs and with specific contexts, in all branches of environmental monitoring and emergency response management. The use of Earth Observation datasets is especially important for monitoring Cultural Heritage sites and monuments that are under threat, providing quantitative and qualitative assessment. Currently, 54 sites are included in the list of World Heritage in Danger by UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee. Approximately the 40% of these are located in the Middle East area. In addition, only during this decade (2010 -today), 30 new sites have been reported as heritage at risk in a global scale. Sentinel and Copernicus contributing missions, as well as other open and freely distributed data, such as the Landsat series, can be exploited in order to identify and map these sites, providing insights and valuable information, for a long period of time, even in areas where in situ observation is not an easy task (e.g. arm conflicted zones). This paper aims to provide examples and case studies of heritage sites at risk, threaten by various anthropogenic hazards - such as terrorism, looting, urbanization etc.- based on image processing and multi-temporal analysis of satellite data, fused with other available information for each site.