Odyssey: A Spatial Data Infrastructure for Archaeology

Geospatial data acquisition methods like airborne LiDAR allow for obtaining large volumes of data, such as aerial and satellite imagery, which are increasingly being used in archaeology. As in other subjects, the ability to produce raw datasets far exceeds the capacity of domain experts to process and analyze them, but recent developments in image processing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Machine Learning (ML) and related technologies enable the transformation of large volumes of data into useful information. However, these technologies are challenging to use and not designed to interact with each other. Hence, tools are needed to efficiently manage, share, document, and reuse archaeological data.

This article presents the Odyssey SDI platform, a spatial data infrastructure for annotating, validating, and visualizing data about archaeological sites. This platform is built upon GeoNode, and special-purpose modules were developed for dealing with archaeological information. The main contribution is the integration of remote sensing, GIS features and ML algorithms in a single framework.