Towards a national infrastructure for semi-automatic mapping of cultural heritage in Norway

Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) is a technique well-suited to creating Digital Terrain Models with the purpose of detecting cultural heritage, given that the cultural heritage manifests itself in the terrain model. This paper presents a pilot web portal for
semi-automatic mapping of archaeological features in ALS data. The intended users are archaeologists in the county administrations in Norway. The pilot portal is already a useful tool for archaeologists in the participating pilot counties in Norway, and
exposes the need for a national infrastructure for processing of ALS data.
Automatic detection based on deep learning is successfully applied. Traditional pattern recognition methods are also included,
but obtain high false positive rates and thus require more manual editing. The web portal supports the following types of cultural heritage: Grave mound, pitfall trap, charcoal burning pit, and charcoal kiln. The web portal is demonstrated with ALS data
from three different locations in Norway.