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I have ~125 analog aerial photographs from 1937 (examples below) and need to reconstruct their locations where the images were taken for a research project. Unfortunately, little is known about them: neither if they are all taken at the same altitude nor if the images are oriented to the north. They could have been taken anywhere within the Germany's borders at the time. And the images were printed in different sizes and thus differ in print/scan resolution. Image recognition won't work because the spatial structures have changed too much since then, but I would imagine that a large part of the land parcels and streets / squares have remained the same. I found this paper by Dragos Costea and Marius Leordeanu describing "Aerial image geolocalization from recognition and matching of roads and intersections", and so far this looks to be the most promising approach for my problem, as it doesn't rely on image recognition. It would be a success for me if I can locate about 7-10% of the images.

However, since I am not a specialist and the implementation / testing means a lot of effort for me, I wonder if you think the project is realistic in principle or even know an alternative method that would be worth trying?

Example image

Example image

Example image

Update: With the help of a known subject (Monument to the Battle of the Nations) I can know determine that the images are not oriented to the north.

enter image description here

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    Sounds like a case for either A: artificial intelligence (propably the approach mentioned in the paper) or B: citicen science. At least for "prominent" locations (as no. 1 seems to be), the last approach could be successful and a lot of academic libraries, archives etc. already have projects in that domain. For images lice no. 2 and 3, chances will probably be larger using AI - indeed, I guess the shape of the road network is very characteristic and could be compared with recent data - or old maps from the 1920's, 1930's.
    – Babel
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 19:57
  • No. 2 by the way is Völkerschlachtendenkmal: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerschlachtdenkmal, see aerial image here: google.de/maps/place/…
    – Babel
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 20:00
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    The shadow of trees, buildings etc. can be a hint about Cardinal direction: in Germany, the sun always comes from SE - S - SW. And probably such kind of images were shot not at early morning and late evening and probably in the warm season (April to September). So assume sun being in the south +/-45 degrees. Also look around which institutions already have aerial images from the region of your interest posted and get in touch, maybe you could use their geolocation for comparision (by machine, if possible).
    – Babel
    Commented May 25, 2021 at 20:07
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    Also have a look at oldmapsonline.org , there is a section for Germany: oldmapsonline.org/en/Germany. On the timeline, select something like 1900 to 1950 and maybe also limit map scale to find maps in a spatial resolution and from the epoch you're interested in: i.sstatic.net/dtKU7.jpg - kartenportal.ch works similarily. davidrumsey.com might be less interesting for Germany.
    – Babel
    Commented May 26, 2021 at 8:29
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    With the site mentioned before, you can find very detailed maps e.g. like this one from the 1930s from Eastern Prussia (new Russian Kaliningrad district): deutschefotothek.de/documents/obj/71051831/df_dk_0010001_1596 - Deutsche Fotothek has a lot of such detailed maps, so it might be worth contacting them.
    – Babel
    Commented May 26, 2021 at 8:47

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