UAV LiDAR Survey of the Villa of Domitian at Sabaudia (Italy): Point Cloud and Digital Terrain Model

This dataset provides a UAV LiDAR survey of the archaeological site of the Villa of Domitian at Sabaudia (Lazio, Italy), together with the derived Digital Terrain Model (DTM) used for archaeological and landscape analysis.The dataset includes a georeferenced LiDAR point cloud, distributed in losslessly compressed LAZ format, and the derived DTM in GeoTIFF and ESRI ASCII Grid formats. The point cloud contains 260,898,892 points and is distributed unclassified, preserving the LiDAR measurements and associated point attributes. The DTM has a spatial resolution of 0.20 m. All datasets are referenced to WGS84 / UTM Zone 33N (EPSG:32633).LiDAR data were acquired using a Velodyne VLP-32C Ultra Puck laser scanner integrated into a 3DT Scanfly Ultra UAV-based mapping system. The survey formed part of a broader multi-sensor investigation of the Villa of Domitian aimed at documenting the archaeological landscape, including areas characterised by dense Mediterranean vegetation. The acquisition and processing methodology is described in: Ronchi, D., Limongiello, M., & Barba, S. (2020). “Correlation among Earthwork and Cropmark Anomalies within Archaeological Landscape Investigation by Using LiDAR and Multispectral Technologies from UAV.” Drones, 4(4), 72. https://doi.org/10.3390/drones4040072 The dataset constitutes one of the primary digital sources supporting the archaeological analyses presented in the open-access monograph: Ronchi, D. (ed.), La villa di Domiziano a Sabaudia. Una residenza imperiale sulle sponde del Lago di Paola, Costruire nel Mondo Antico, vol. 14, 2026, Quasar. The research was carried out within the project “The Domitian Villa: An Imperial Residence in Sabaudia, Italy”, funded by the Shelby White and Leon Levy Program, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le Province di Frosinone e Latina (SABAP Lazio) and the Department of Civil Engineering (DICIV), University of Salerno – MODELLI Lab.