DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10497762
title: LocalDEM+ of the hinterland of Ravenna

description: Digital elevation model at 10 m resolution free of modern interferences of the hinterland of Ravenna, Italy.

This dataset includes:



Ravenna_hinterland_LocalDEM+.tif = digital elevation model at 10 m resolution free of modern interferences of the hinterland of Ravenna

Ravenna_hinterland_LocalDEM+.gpkg = vector point file containing the elevation data used to model the LocalDEM+ of the hinterland of Ravenna


The LocalDEM+ for the hinterland of Ravenna was created by interpolating ground control points (GCP) manually recorded by the Emilia-Romagna region [1]. In December 2018, the downloaded dataset still included modern artefacts among the almost 400.000 points, such as those over artificial fluvial banks, streets, railroads, and the A14 highway. Therefore, all elevation points not classified as “isolato al suolo” (= recorded on the bare soil) were removed to filter out these modern disturbances. Further manual cleaning was carried out to remove additional points along artificial infrastructures such as fluvial banks and the highway.

The original LocalDEM was created interpolating the resulting 160.481 points using the Inverse Distance Weighting method [2] creating a DTM at 10 m resolution devoid of modern interferences (Version v1).

The same 160.481 points dataset has also been interpolated via co-kriging [3] using FABDEM V1-2 [4] as the second correlated variable. Tiles “N044E011” and “N044E012” [5] were merged together before interpolation and 250.000 locations were randomly sampled within the merged grid extension using the “Random points” tool. Elevation for all 250.000 locations was extracted using the "Sample raster values” tool.

The improved LocalDEM+ shares the same spatial dimension and pixel resolution of 10 m, being as well devoid of modern interferences (Version v2).

 

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[1] Data was retrieved from https://geoportale.regione.emilia-romagna.it/download/download-data on 21st December 2018 (last accessed on 10 February 2021).

[2] Mitas, L., & Mitasova, H. (2005). Spatial Interpolation. In P. Longley, M. F. Goodchild, D. J. Maguire, & D. W. Rhind (Eds.), Geographical Information Systems: Principles, Techniques, Management and Applications (Second Edition., pp. 481–832). Wiley.

[3] Gooverts, P. (1998). “Ordinary cokriging revisited”, Mathematical Geology 30, pp. 21–42, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021757104135

[4] FABDEM (Forest And Buildings removed Copernicus DEM) is a global elevation map that removes building and tree height biases from the Copernicus GLO 30 Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The data is available at 1 arc second grid spacing (approximately 30m at the equator) for the globe. FABDEM is introduced in Hawker et al. (2022), “A 30 m global map of elevation with forests and buildings removed”, Environmental Research Letters 17(2), https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4d4f

[5] Data was retrieved from https://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/s5hqmjcdj8yo2ibzi9b4ew3sn on 12th January 2024 (last accessed on 12th January 2024).
description: "Geoarchaeology and palaeoDEMs modelling to assess the archaeological potential of Ravenna and its hinterland" is a multidisciplinary and diachronic PhD project whose aim was to reconstruct the physical evolution of the landscape around Ravenna (Italy) from the Bronze Age until today and how this influenced human occupation in the area. The PhD project was carried out by Michele Abballe at Ghent University/University of Verona, under the supervision of Frank Vermeulen (Ghent University), and the co-supervision of Fabio Saggioro (University of Verona), Devi Taelman (Ghent University) and Jeroen Verhegge (Ghent University). The PhD project was funded by the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds UGent (BOF) under Grant number BOF.FJD.2017.0002.01 and supported by three Grants for long stays abroad by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) under Grant numbers V421419N, V430720N, and V409421N. This is one of the datasets produced within Michele Abballe's PhD project "Geoarchaeology and palaeoDEMs modelling to assess the archaeological potential of Ravenna and its hinterland".

Additional research for the implementation of this dataset was funded by the European Union, as part of a research fellowship which is supported by ERC grant SSE1K, GA 101044437, DOI 10.3030/101044437. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.