Historical images, i.e. photos from the origin of photography to the beginning of the digital era (ca 2005), are becoming more and more a valuable source of information, yet hiding still many processing problems. Being aerial or terrestrial, nadir or oblique, many collections around the world are under digitization, providing a great amount of data for multiple purposes. Archives are offering long-term time series, relatively dense temporal resolution, quite high geometric resolution and very often stereo coverage. Historical aerial images had different formats (23x23cm, 30x30cm, microfilms, etc.) and were acquired for various purposes (e.g. topographic map generation and updating, visual interpretation, reconnaissance, etc.).

EuroSDR, in collaboration with various European National Mapping Agencies, launched a research activity on hisTorical aerIal iMagEs (TIME) to investigate the potential of historical aerial images and the actual bottlenecks in processing archival aerial dataset for mapping purposes.

For more information about this benchmark, click here.