## 1 Introduction
The tangible limits of these approaches include: (1) incomplete research methodology, which does not consider the potential of remote sensing for sites identification, particularly for sites which are better appreciated from space than from ground-level; (2) limited timeframe, as ground-truthing allows only the identification of the latest types of damage that are visible at the time of in situ survey; (3) incomplete geographic coverage, as confirmed by many archaeological surveys in prospective dam reservoirs [34]. When dealing with large-scale areas and time pressure, these shortcomings could be effectively overcome by enriching rescue archaeology methodologies with the systematic integration of remote sensing of satellite imagery. Indeed, while this approach is receiving increasing attention and is applied by a growing number of research-driven academic projects [8; 9; 58; 59], the systematic use of satellite data within the field of large-scale rescue archaeology projects, especially in countries with a weak CHM-related legislation, is still far from being standard practice across the archaeological community [31; 34; 60; 61]. This may be due to a variety of factors including the underestimation of the real potential of this tool, the lack of necessary expertise of most archaeologists to access, process and interpret evidence from satellite imagery, and the fact that many archaeologists still privilege bespoke aerial imagery. The lack of understanding of the different potential use of the wide array of satellite missions that are currently available may also be slowing down the spread of this practice. In other cases, the reason for not using satellite remote sensing is exactly the opposite. For example, rescue archaeology is applied to other types of development that have different technical requirements for investigation, thus making satellite remote sensing data not suitable and thus not sought for (e.g., insufficient spatial resolution; features to document are not well visible from space). However, this scenario is more likely to occur if the archaeologist/practitioner/operator already has a background knowledge or previous experience with satellite remote sensing. As far as the operator's expertise and experience are concerned, multidisciplinary collaboration proves to be one of the most effective ways forward to tackle the above described issues [58], and is here considered an effective means to stimulate an aware use of satellite imagery by archaeologists to study and protect the past. The importance of integrating remote sensing in the documentation of damages to cultural heritage threatened by dams has been recently stressed by [PERSON] et al. [31] which proposed a three-phase action protocol: (1) Preliminary analysis of the archaeological evidence identified through Pre-Construction Archaeological Risk Assessment (PCARA); (2) Archaeological activities carried out during the construction of the dam defined as Pre-Flooding Rescue Archaeological Program (PFRAP); (3) Analysis of the final impact of the dam, conducted in the frame of the Post-Flooding Archaeological Damage Assessment (PFADA). For each of these steps, specific remote sensing and ground-truthing activities have been proposed, although detailed methods and workflows have not yet been defined and tested. This paper wishes to contribute to bridge the gap in the use of satellite imagery for assessing damages to cultural heritage threatened by dams. In particular, we explore the potential of SAR and open access multispectral satellite imagery, using state-of-the-art approaches to develop a workflow for the PCARA and the initial phase of PFRAP protocol steps, through a multidisciplinary collaboration.