An Article featured in the Winter 2013 issue of Johns Hopkins Engineering Magazine highlights the recent collaboration between Baltimore-based archaeology expert Douglas C. Comer and Professor Carey Priebe. “To Dig or Not to Dig” details how the Priebe-Comer team currently working with the National Park Service, NASA, and the Department of Defense is using statistics to mine rich data sets from aerial and satellite remote sensing.

The unlikely partnership has resulted in a new way to conduct wide-area surveys of the Earth’s surface to identify archaeologically rich “hot spots,” and it could pave the way for improving the ability of governments worldwide to quickly, and cost-effectively, inventory heritage sites. The U.S., for example, has inventoried only 15 percent of its public lands. “It’s not a matter of finding everything,” explains Comer, “It’s a matter of not building on, developing, or destroying areas that might be important.”

Read the full story here.