Background

Between 1952 and 1954, the Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN) came to Cambodia to carry out a large-scale photographic project, taking around 11,000 aerial images over a large part of the country. This collection constitutes an exceptional heritage of memory for the country and of knowledge in many fields of research. Before the launch of the first Earth observation satellites in the 1970s, aerial photographs were the only views that could be used to observe territories. In addition to these early aerial photographs, a higher-resolution shot of Phnom Penh in 1993 is available, with incredible details of life in the streets of the capital city.

The KAPA project was set up to digitize and process these images in order to make them accessible and usable free of charge in Cambodia. It has received support from the French Embassy in Cambodia through the Fonds de Solidarité pour les Projets Innovants (FSPI-R). It is being conducted by the French national research institute for sustainable development (IRD)'s UMR Espace-Dev and the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) as part of the KHEOBS (KHmer Earth OBServation) laboratory, in collaboration with IGNFI and the IGN.

The images were digitized by IGN and supplied to the KHEOBS laboratory to create orthophotographs, with technical support from IGNFI for training and monitoring the work. This involved a long process of georeferencing and orthorectification to correct the geometry using elevation data and remarkable points on the ground to finally create a mosaic of images. To make these 1953 and 1993 images accessible to everyone, a web application, GeoCambodia , has been developed to view them easily and compare them with recent Google Earth images. The interface can also be used to select a number of outstanding buildings to open their descriptive architectural factsheets from the Atelier Parisien d'Urbanisme (APUR).

A sneak peek at Memoirs of Michel Bélikian, former IGN Navigant Photographer with some photos, you can now read the full story here: Mémoires de Michel Bélikian, ancien Photographe Navigant de l’IGN (French).




Contributors: 🚀

Project coordination: Vincent HERBRETEAU (IRD - UMR Espace-Dev), Vannak ANN (ITC - WAE Research Unit) and Gaëtan CHAUDAGNE (IGNFI)
GeoCambodia web platform: Chamroeun YORNGSOK (IRD-ITC KHEOBS), George GE (IRD-ITC KHEOBS) and Vincent HERBRETEAU (IRD)
Orthorectification of aerial photographs: Makara SOY (IRD-ITC KHEOBS), Sopheak KHIM (IRD-ITC KHEOBS) and Vincent BOUSQUET (IGNFI)
Digitization of aerial photographs: IGN France
Architectural factsheets for 1993 buildings: Christiane Blancot, Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUR)

Data Sources:

Aerial photographs in 1952, 1953 and 1993: IGN France
Building polygons from 1993: digitization realized by APUR (Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme) Google Earth images

Funding:

The “Khmer Aerial Photographic Archive” (KAPA) project has received financial support from France through the Fonds de Solidarité pour les Projets Innovants (FSPI-R 2023-08)