The project set a benchmark in the use of optimal transport for identifying looting activities directly on a bi-temporal pair of airborne LiDAR point clouds collected over the same geographical area.
The characterisation and selection of looted sites were performed in the three months of secondment at the Centre for Cultural Heritage Technology (CCHT) of the Italian Institute of Technology (the European host institution). The main output of this secondment was the collection of multi-temporal LiDAR point clouds to identify traces of looting activities provided by archaeologists who collaborated on this project.
In the outgoing phase at Kyoto University, the fellow designed and implemented an unbalanced optimal transport-based pipeline to identify changes related to looting activities on point clouds. The efficacy of this approach was demonstrated both on a test-bench dataset for change detection in an urban environment and on the created dataset for the identification of looting activities. The use of optimal transport for processing point clouds elucidated the depth of the detected looting pits, which is crucial information to understand the state of degradation of the pillaged sites.
In the incoming phase at the CCHT, the fellow transferred the knowledge acquired in optimal transport, optimization, and LiDAR processing to CCHT's PhD students and junior postdocs through supervision activities. The primary outcome of these supervision activities was the submission of two papers to the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). In collaboration with Kyoto University, the fellow developed another novel change detection approach based on implicit neural representation that was presented at the Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision 2024 (WACV).
A dedicated website was created to serve as a hub providing access to content suitable for both academic and general audiences. Communication activities entailed the participation of the fellow in initiatives such as visits to primary schools as MC Ambassador and training of young students through hands-on workshops. Scientific dissemination was pursued through the presentation of two accepted papers at IGARSS 2023 in Pasadena, California, and a paper at WACV in Hawaii, one of the four top-tier conferences in computer vision. Another two papers were submitted to IGARSS 2024. The fellow disseminates the OPTIMAL project through seven invited talks given at various institutions around the world. Additionally, the fellow organized an international workshop that delved into the combined expertise in the fields of Machine Learning, Remote Sensing, and Landscape Archaeology.
