PYTHON BASED MODELLING OF GROUND PENETRATING RADAR DATA

Today,it has become important to determine the location of buried materials inarchaeological sites with non-destructive methods. At this point, the use ofshallow geophysical methods is a priority. In shallow geophysical methods, itis possible to find both economical and fast solutions to determine thelocations of sarcophagi, walls, roads and similar archaeological elements in anexisting archaeological area. In recent years, archaeologists have resorted tonon-destructive geophysical methods to map the area, narrow the search area,and locate existing objects before the excavations. The main undamagedgeophysical methods used in archaeological searches are Ground penetrating radar(GPR), Electrical resistivity tomography method (ERT) and magnetics. There area wide range of GPR applications including: assessing critical infrastructuresuch as bridges and roads, locating buried utilities, mapping glaciers, findinganti-personnel landmines, and detecting tumours in the human body. In thisstudy, GPR measurements were performed using Proceq GS8000 GPR equipment along 20 profiles at the Yassıtepe archaeological site inthe city of İzmir. The device takes measurements in the 40-3440 MHZ frequencyband and information can be obtained up to a depth of 10 meters. In dataprocessing stages, firstly forward modelling was made using Python based gprMax,an open source software that simulates electromagnetic wave propagation, for 3 different geometrical models. The software usesMaxwell’s equations in 3D using the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) algorithm.After that, horizontal amplitude maps were prepared by using 2D inversion andthe results were compared. In conclusion, the maps obtained as a result of theinverse solution and the synthetic models obtained using the gprMax softwarewere compared, and it is determined that the observed and theoretical outcomesgive similar results. An area is proposed for excavation.