Airborne laser scanning data and deep learning in the detection of archaeological features

Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) technology can be used to identify previously unknown archaeological monuments. Spatial interpretation of numerous objects with various shapes and sizes is a difficult challenge for archaeologists. Techniques based on manual labelling and georeferencing of objects require a lot of desk work and are very time-consuming. Therefore, the process of ALS data analysis has been supported by human-supervised procedures for automatic recognition of potential archaeological objects. Image classification and segmentation, as well as object recognition, are the most important tasks for deep learning neural networks and therefore they can be used for automatic recognition of archaeological monuments. The article is an introduction to the work carried out at the Institute of Computer Science at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, related to the application of IT tools, including artificial intelligence technologies, in cultural heritage activities in Poland, with a particular focus on forest areas, LiDAR data and geoinformatics tools.