A Newly Developed Tool for the Post-Processing of GPR Time-Slices in A GIS Environment

Abstract

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a precious and reliable research tool broadly used in archaeology because of its capacity to produce three-dimensional data about features preserved underground, such as buildings, infrastructures, and burials, as well as building rubble. GPR data (time-slices) management and exploitation in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is mostly limited to the visualization and the manual interpretation and mapping of separate single time-slices. This study presents a newly developed plug-in designed to automatically post-process GPR time-slices in a GIS environment, to identify anomalies, and to produce a synchronic view of them. This map product, when combined with a DTM, results in a 2D map of subsurface anomalies which shows the absolute height of features above sea level, thus offering a comprehensive view of the three-dimensional configuration of the subsurface features identified. The paper illustrates the pixel-based processing chain of the plug-in and the results of the tests carried out in the case study of the Roman town of Falerii Novi (Italy), on the basis of high-resolution open access GPR data recently collected by the University of Cambridge and Ghent.