Purdue Teams Unravel Mysterious Mediterranean Island

Purdue researchers used drones and lidar mapping systems to better understand the history of Dana Island, located off the southern coast of Turkey. Courtesy of Purdue University.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., Nov. 21, 2019 — Researchers from Purdue University’s College of Liberal Arts (CLA) and Lyles School of Civil Engineering have teamed up to explore the geography and artifacts from Dana Island, located off the southern coast of Turkey. The initiative follows the CLA’s history of research on socio-human and remote sensing.

The mysterious history of the island has made way for a host of stories, from it being a possible prison to a site for worship, which is one reason researchers from Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts decided to explore the geography and artifacts from the island.

The engineering team created a drone and system technology to do flyovers around the island and chart measurements from the lidar point clouds and aerial photographs. The team is combining that work with the discovery of artifacts from the liberal arts researchers to put together historical information about the use of the island, where objects related to shipbuilding and quarries have been discovered.

The research began as part of the College of Liberal Arts’ ROSETTA initiative, which focused on remote sensing technologies and techniques in archaeo-anthropology.

“We proved the high potential for our technology to be used for data collection for archaeological documentation,” said Ayman Habib, professor of civil engineering at Purdue’s Thomas A. Page Pavilion and co-director of the Civil Engineering Center for Applications of UAS for a Sustainable Environment. “We have opened the door to new and different methods and research problems in accurate mapping of real-world objects and locations.

“This was our most challenging work yet involving our drone and mapping systems,” Habib said. “We faced major challenges in getting the equipment to the island and then working around the dense vegetation and some snakes.”