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The ancient city of Abdera is located along the northern coast of the Aegean Sea, in the prefecture of Xanthi in Thrace, Greece. Within the fortification walls of the Late Classical/Hellenistic city are the remains of the Insula of Houses, first investigated by the archaeologist Demetrios Lazarides in the 1950s with subsequent clearance and conservation work conducted by the Greek Archaeological Service in the 1990s and 2000s. In 2005 Maria Papaioannou from the University of New Brunswick began a detailed architectural and artifact study of the Roman period peristyle house from this Insula.
With a research grant from SSHRC a collaborative interdisciplinary venture was undertaken in 2016 using Terrestrial Laser Scanning to document the insula. A digital, 3D archival record was created and used to design digital elevation models (visualization theories), fly-throughs and virtual models for research and educational purposes. The project is directed by Maria Papaioanou (Classics & Ancient History) and collaborator Peter Dare (Geodesy & Geomatics, Engineering) from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, and is under the auspices of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Xanthi, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Canadian Institute in Greece. Generous support was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of New Brunswick.