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ENVIŽ is Software of Choice for Modern Archaeological Study of Ancient
Mines
BOULDER, Colo. -- Research Systems, Inc., a leading developer of technical
visualization and application development software, announced today that
its remote sensing software package ENVI is being used by the
multinational RAVEN team to locate and determine the environmental impact
of ancient mines in Egypt, Spain and Scotland.
The RAVEN (Remote Sensing Archaeology and Visualization of the
Environment) team is using ENVI, the Environment for Visualizing Images,
to analyze spaceborne and satellite imagery in an effort to locate and
explore ancient mines in several countries. Their hope is that this
research will serve as a starting point to providing cleaner water to
those areas.
The team, based out of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, is using
ENVI to detect, survey and analyze the structure of mines in three
different areas. The first area contained the Mines of the Pharaohs,
located in Sinai, Egypt. The second area was located in Spain and
contained the Phoenician mines, and the third mine concentration was
located on the Isle of Islay in Scotland.
The three locations were selected due to their climatic diversity, ranging
from hyper-arid to wet. The team members worked with a wide variety of
data in their research, including SIR-C, ALMAZ, CORONA, LANDSAT, SPOT,
LIDAR, and GIS data-raster and vector.
ENVI can be used with all image data, and is the only remote sensing
analysis software the RAVEN team uses. "The ability of ENVI to easily
handle RADAR and optical data-then rapidly fuse it to GIS data, is
unequaled, period," said Gary McKay, remote sensing archaeologist,
University of Edinburgh. "Remote sensing archaeology is extremely
interdisciplinary in its approach, and demands data fusion and analysis on
an unprecedented scale in comparison to some other scientific disciplines.
I need a 'whole picture'- and ENVI gives me what I want, quickly and
easily, without taxing my oftentimes limited computer resources."
ENVI has been instrumental in several important discoveries:
Mines were successfully detected and mapped with imaging radar data.
Landscape models were created to help understand previous landscapes
during a particular period, as in the case of Islay, where ancient raised
beaches denote the limit of previous possible cultural sites.
ENVI provided the ability to easily create relatively accurate
landscape models, and to survey large areas by virtual simulation, which
will enable the archaeologist to establish links between settlements.
For more information on the RAVEN team and their research, please visit
their site at http://www.arcl.ed.ac.uk/arch/remotesense/index.html. For
the full application story, please visit
http://www.rsinc.com/AppProfile/envi_edin.cfm.
ENVI is written entirely in IDLŽ, the Interactive Data Language, Research
Systems' fourth-generation programming language for engineers, scientists
and software developers with the need to build applications for
visualizing large amounts of data. This means users can expand ENVI's
features or create their own routines using IDL.
About Research Systems, Inc.
Boulder, Colo.-based Research Systems, Inc., is a privately-held company
that supports more than 75,000 users of its data analysis and
visualization software products worldwide through a direct sales force and
network of international subsidiaries and distributors. Primary markets
for the company's products are aerospace, earth sciences, physics,
software development, medical imaging and engineering test and
measurement. Additional information can be found at Research Systems' Web
site www.ResearchSystems.com.
For more information regarding this press release, please contact Michelle
Asher at masher@researchsystems.com or at 303-413-3951. ENVI is a
registered trademark of BSC, LLC. IDL is a registered trademark of
Research Systems, Inc.
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