Benchmark TIME
- hisTorical aerIal iMagEs -
Historical images, i.e. photos from the origin of photography to the beginning of the digital era (ca 2005), are becoming more and more a valuable source of information, yet hiding still many processing problems. Being aerial or terrestrial, nadir or oblique, many collections around the world are under digitization, providing a great amount of data for multiple purposes. Archives are offering long-term time series, relatively dense temporal resolution, quite high geometric resolution and very often stereo coverage. Historical aerial images had different formats (23x23cm, 30x30cm, microfilms, etc.) and were acquired for various purposes (e.g. topographic map generation and updating, visual interpretation, reconnaissance, etc.).
EuroSDR, in collaboration with various European National Mapping Agencies, launched a research activity on hisTorical aerIal iMagEs (TIME) to investigate the potential of historical aerial images and the actual bottlenecks in processing archival aerial dataset for mapping purposes.
The aim of the EuroSDR TIME benchmark is to collect, harmonize and share with the research community a series of historical aerial images in order to investigate open issues in various photogrammetric processing steps.
The shared data should stimulate research activities and deliver advanced and automated procedures in order to fully exploit the invaluable contents of historical images, notwithstanding their importance from an historical point of view.
