Home > Streamlined Archaeo-Geophysical Data Processing and Integration for DoD Field Use > Problem Statement
Abstract | Problem Statement | Technical Description | Implementation Plan | References
A major component of the Cultural Resources Management (CRM) work conducted on military installations involves evaluation of prehistoric and historic archaeological sites for National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) eligibility in compliance with federal laws. Traditional methods for site evaluation based on hand excavation are costly, invasive, time consuming, and potentially unreliable. As a result of research conducted in the SERDP Project CS-1263 New Approaches to the Use and Integration of Multi-Sensor Remote Sensing for Historic Resource Identification and Evaluation, methods have been developed which provide exceptionally detailed, remotely sensed images of the subsurface, which permit accurate characterization of cultural deposits for a wide range of archaeological sites.
This research has not only demonstrated that remote sensing (including satellite, aerial, and ground-based geophysical sensors) can produce a level of information about subsurface deposits far richer than that provided by highly invasive traditional approaches, but also that large area (1-2 ha) surveys with multiple instruments are very cost effective; data acquisition typically requiring less than one week of field time. However, the inordinate amount of time required to manually process and fuse the disparate datasets produced by each instrument in the suite is a primary obstacle to much broader adoption and effective use of the methods developed during this research. At present, fully processing and fusing data from a multi-sensor survey typically requires the expert-level use of seven or more commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software packages and hundreds of hours of repetitive work.
Making remotely sensed information readily available to DoD CRM programs by streamlining data processing and integration will dramatically reduce labor costs and expertise requirements, and will provide enhanced information content and reliability of survey results (i.e., interpretations of images revealing subsurface cultural deposits).This project will demonstrate and validate the methods, outcomes, and time and cost savings resulting from the application of these newly developed approaches to DoD installation cultural resource managers, the staff of key regulatory oversight offices, e.g. the State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPO), Tribal Historic Preservation Offices (THPO), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), as well as CRM decision makers from other federal agencies (e.g., National Park Service, Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, Natural Resources Conservation Service). The results of CS-1263 have unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness and cost savings that result from the application of the new methods. The successful adoption of these new methods, however, requires that there is an easy-to-use deployment environment and, more importantly, that the approach is accepted, adopted and approved by the state and federal and tribal regulatory elements (e.g. SHPOs, ACHPs, THPOs, etc.). This demonstration effort is designed to accomplish both of these goals.
