Digitally approaching North Frisia’s lost landscape by Spatial Data Analysis and Geodata infrastructure within TORF (SP7)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Alexandra Busch
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 541064351

The aim of the SP7 sub-project of the TORF research group is to create a basis for the digital reconstruction of the medieval coastal landscape of North Friesland and its development by integrating and GIS- and AI-supported analyses of heterogeneous data from the TORF sub-projects (including aerial photographs, remote sensing and geophysical prospection data, historical maps). Therefore the sub-project has two closely interlinked focal points: Research Focus A will develop and FAIRly provide a distributed data infrastructure based on a TORF Metadata Knowledge Hub (MKH) for all TORF projects. This work will establish a TORF infrastructure which deals with a distributed ecosystem of research data within the individual sub-projects: structured data (SP1-6), imaging data (SP1-6), spatial data (SP1-7), non-structured data (SP1-6), geophysics data (SP2), media (SP1), and x-ray data (SP1). This research focus B will develop and apply new methods and approaches of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for image enhancement and structure and topology finding within the selected datasets of the TORF consortium (see below). On a two step basis, data and image refinement methods will be tested and applied that include both methods for the enhancement of the spatial resolution as well as the closure of gaps or spatial continuation of the existing datasets. The data will be prepared for possible later import into suitable 3D environments to enable 3D visualization, e.g. in augmented reality (AR). By establishing an integrated research data infrastructure and by organizing, combining, analyzing and publishing the large and heterogeneous data sets of the TORF subprojects for the scientific community and the public, SP7 makes a significant contribution to the entire research group. SP7 promotes synergies between the subprojects of the research group and syntheses and it guarantees that the TORF data will be accessible according to the FAIR principles.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5837: Times of Rise and Failure (TORF) - Integrative research on the cultural landscape development in the North Frisian Wadden Sea region during the common era
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Allard Mees