National Monuments

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PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

Category

• Topographic information
• Impact assessment
• Change detection / continuous monitoring
• Land cover / use
• Near surface geology

• Surface deformation
• Precision ortho-images
• Terrain information
• Water quantity & quality

Uses

Exploration

• Infrastructural mapping.

Environmental, assessment & permitting

• Locations and baseline ground elevation conditions of national monuments.

Construction, operations and aftercare

• Continuous monitoring of surface movements (subsidence) at the mining site and potential hazards for close-by national monuments.

Challenges addressed

• Permitting Process – Restricted Lands
• Closure and Aftercare – Affected Stakeholders

Geo-information needs

• P-11: National monuments
• CA-5: Demonstration no impact on national heritage locations

Description

This product provides information on national monuments and areas of cultural and heritage value that may be sensitive to damage caused by mining activities. Their mapping and locations relative to the potential mining site are of importance in the exploration, assessment and approval steps of the mining cycle.

Given an estimation of the land area disturbed by the mining operation is provided, a list of the locations of national monuments potentially at risk will be provided. The locations of national monuments are often directly available from national mapping authorities (e.g., the Norwegian Mapping Authority gives access to shapefiles containing important infrastructures). In the eventually of such product being unavailable or of insufficient accuracy, the locations of national monuments can be directly extracted from optical visible images (provided the availability of a database of the national monuments within the region of interest).

Known restrictions / limitations

Different levels of resolution may be required to map infrastructures and areas of cultural and heritage value. The required resolution will vary depending on the size of the monument of interest but may be as small as 1m², for example for standing stones or may be hundreds of m² for protected buildings and gardens.

Lifecycle stage and demand

Exploration

Environmental Assessment and Permitting

Design, Construction and Operations

Mine Closure and Aftercare

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Environmental Assessment & Permitting:

• Mapping of national monuments and areas of cultural and heritage value to assess potential infrastructure hazards and risks caused by mining activities (e.g., surface vibrations during construction and operations).
• Elevation information to establish baseline data for monuments.

Design, Construction and Operations / Mine Closure & Aftercare

• Continuous monitoring of subsidence at constant frequency interval.

Comparison to baseline data in order to prove that mining operation did not lead to any movement of structures.

Geographic coverage

EARSC Thematic Domain

Domain

PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS

Input data sources

Website

Minimum Mapping Unit (MMU)

Minimum detectable feature size (dependent on input pixel resolution, ~1 - 3 px)

Accuracy / constraints

Thematic accuracy:

>85% threshold for overall accuracy / class accuracy.

Spatial accuracy:

Dependent on input pixel resolution; typically ~0.5 - 1 pixel.

Accuracy assessment approach & quality control measures

Dependent on input pixel resolution; typically ~0.5 - 1 pixel (~mm to m).

Frequency / timeliness

Digitalization of national monuments from imagery products can be completed within a few hours/days of work, dependent on the number of national monuments in (or close-by) the potential mining area. Once in a time task.

Very high-resolution Digital Surface Model (DSM), Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and subsidence analysis can be generated within a few days of imagery product acquisition, dependent on how large the region of interest is (baseline and continuous monitoring).

In general, the “National Monuments” product does not require high-frequency measurement but include more once in a time task (digitalization of the location of national monuments) and long-term monitoring (~ yearly analysis of subsidence).

Availability

Data from Sentinel satellites are freely available through the open data policy of the European Space Agency. Data is made available typically within 6-12 hours of satellite fly-over (similar for Landsat through NASA open data policy).

GeoEye-1, Worldview and SPOT data are commercially licensed and must be purchased through operator/vendor. Usually available within hour(s) of satellite fly-over.

Delivery / output format

Ground elevation measurements (subsidence)

Maps showing ground elevation changes over time for specific national monuments.  Output: raster formats - GeoTiff, client-specified raster formats, report on key indicators.

National monuments

Map showing the given location of national monuments close-by the mining site.   Output: vector formats - shapefile, client-specified spatial formats, report on key indicators.

USE CASE