Champassak , temporary antenna

The EFEO branch in Champasak was created in 2020 to host and organize various projects and operations that the EFEO is conducting in southern Laos as part of the CHAMPA project. It is located in the premises of the Vat Phou Champasak World Heritage Site Office (WHSO).

The CHAMPA project was launched in 2020 for an initial period of five years and has recently been extended until 2027. It is funded by the French Development Agency for a total amount of €11 million. It comprises several distinct and complementary components that are being implemented by the Laotian authorities (within the Laotian Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism) and by the EFEO. For the latter, the interventions are of various kinds and are coordinated by Christophe Pottier. They include archaeological mapping, including Lidar acquisition over more than 4,000 km2, archaeological excavations, the development and enhancement of archaeological sites, the study and conservation of pieces from a “treasure” made of precious materials, the museography of a major renovation of the Savannakhet Provincial Museum, the development of a conservation workshop and storage facilities within an extension of the Vat Phou museum, and the training of various categories of staff, workers, technicians, and supervisors.

As soon as the project agreement was signed in January 2020, David Bazin was recruited and assigned to Champassak to set up and manage a geospatial laboratory, under the supervision of Damian Evans, in an office kindly provided by the WHSO. Renovation work was completed despite the pandemic, and an agreement governing the installation and use of the laboratory was signed between the EFEO and the WHSO in December 2020. The laboratory has been fully operational since April 2021.

The geomatics laboratory is based on the Lidar team, composed of David Bazin, Sybounheuang Phimmasenh, and Vilasak Pongsawath, engineers from the WHSO. In addition to work related to archaeological mapping, supervised by Christophe Pottier since the death of Damian Evans in September 2023, the Champassak branch is hosting the growing activities of other parts of the project and numerous missions by colleagues and collaborators of the EFEO on the site: Christine Hawixbrock, Bertrand Porte, Brice Vincent, Marie-Catherine Beaufeist, Nicolas Nauleau, Vissa Chanthapasouk, etc. The office benefits from significant support from the EFEO Center in Vientiane, directed by Michel Lorrillard.

The office is equipped with five computers and two laptops, connected to an internal network NAS for sharing, processing, and storing geospatial data from Lidar acquisitions, ground-penetrating radar surveys, field surveys, and photogrammetry data. Two drones (DJI Mavic 3 and DJI 3 Mini Pro) and three cameras are used to acquire photo and video data. A complete RTK (real-time positioning) system and a theodolite complete the equipment needed for topographic surveys and orthophotography. A ground-penetrating radar (GPR) was acquired in May 2021 for underground radar surveys, to supplement Lidar data and support archaeological excavations.

Archeoscape.ai Laboratory

• LIDAR data analysis and field use
• Archaeological surveys, archaeological data management
• Topographic surveys, ground-penetrating radar surveys, orthophotos, and photogrammetry.

• Training Lao students (engineers) for their end-of-study internship in the use of GIS, topographic surveying techniques, and archaeological prospecting.
• Internship of Lucie Hartereau, from September to December 2025, in her second year of topographic engineering at the École Supérieure des Ingénieurs Géomètres du Mans (ESGT).

Translated with DeepL.com