Identifying Courtyard Locations in Mosul's Old City through Advanced Image Processing Techniques

Abstract-In the aftermath of conflict, urban environments frequently sustain substantial damage, necessitating concerted efforts to reconstruct the affected urban fabric. The absence of comprehensive documentation for reconstruction often mandates the deployment of innovative techniques and methodologies to facilitate the reimagining and subsequent reconstruction of significant urban elements. Aerial photography serves as a critical tool in documenting urban fabric components. In 2017, extensive destruction occurred across various districts of Mosul's Old City (MOC), resulting in the obliteration of key urban fabric features. MOC is distinguished by its dense urban fabric and the prevalence of internal courtyards within its buildings, which function as essential outlets for lighting and ventilation, in addition to their aesthetic, social, and functional roles. This study leverages historical aerial photographs to identify the positions of building courtyards within a section of MOC's urban fabric, constituting an initial step in a comprehensive plan to represent these features in the absence of requisite documentation and surveys. The proposed methodology involves a series of sequential phases utilizing advanced image processing techniques (AIP) to achieve the desired outcomes, enabling the determination of courtyard positions in a network format whose geo-locations can be readily ascertained.