t is 
in 
ical 
use 
atial 
lata. 
idly 
"ical 
1 of 
r in 
that 
it of 
thin 
sing 
@) 
sites 
1ges 
low. 
of 
les 
lack 
d to 
uard 
the 
wth 
| by 
's of 
geophysical methods such as geo-electrics, radar or 
electromagnetics. Lastly, (3) Digitization of maps or sites on 
the GIS platform in vector format is useful, for example to 
easily calculate the area of a site or link it to its specific 
attributes. 
Different authors (Box 1999; Hernandez 2002) promote the use 
of GIS in cultural heritage and see their further application in 
site monitoring, as is proposed by the European Space Agency 
and UNESCO ‘Open Initiative on the use of space technologies 
to support the World Heritage Convention’. Others (Boccardi 
2002) are more sceptical about its use, especially in developing 
countries. No matter the differences of opinions, GIS is 
becoming a powerful management tool together with improved 
management databases, serving as another type of 
communication where information and knowledge can be easily 
shared (Meyer et al. 2007). 
2. Geospatial Content Management Systems (GeoCMS) in 
Cultural Heritage 
The need for documenting, standardizing and visualizing 
information in a user-friendly way, together with the 
advantages of GIS, GeoCMS, an advanced form of IMS, are 
becoming more popular in the field of cultural heritage. A 
GeoCMS is a software tool used to manage, search and publish 
various kinds of digital media and electronic text, implemented 
as a web application and hence allowing for the creation and 
management of HTML content. It manages and controls a large, 
dynamic collections of web material (HTML documents and 
their associated images) providing an additional functionality to 
a geoportal for managing as well as viewing geographic 
information over the internet. For the system administrator it 
provides tools for uploading geographic information and 
deploying geographic web services so as the website visitor can 
view geographical information, navigate and perform basic 
spatial analysis. Examples of current practices of IMS in 
cultural heritage are listed in Table 1. Most of the systems are 
openly accessible to the public but require additional 
registration to edit data. However, there is currently no open 
system supporting the preparation of WH nominations. 
  
  
  
  
Name Objective Accessibility Link 
UNESCO Word Aichive showing fe shared publie = 
Heritage Centre properties included in 
Word Hentage List and 
their related activities 
Middle Eastern Database of Restricted nito: /measordan ora! 
Gendatatiase foi ANGE Sales irt access 
Antauities (MEGA Jordan 
Jordani 
Global Heritage An Carly Warning and Opon access Hip ahh atesatfent 
Network (GHN) Colluborative: Solutions and restrieted gelu nee pdons ob 
Platform ity p 
access 
Berlin Wal interactive GIS shared public 
documenting the Bertın 
Wall 
Heritech for the ety of GeolCT for the shared public 
  
  
    
Biograd na Moni preservalion and 
promotion of Croatian 
Cultural Hantage 
Monument Watch Monitoring and shared public 
Flanders maintes dem for 
ier But. Cuitural Tertage 
m the Fiemists Region, 
Beigranm 
Table 1: Information Management Systems in Cultural Heritage 
3. WHAT IS THE SILK ROADS CHRIS? 
The Silk Roads CHRIS is a bespoke GeoCMS that has been 
tailored to support the preparation of the serial transnational 
Silk Roads nomination dossier based on the Operational 
Guidelines (UNESCO 2011 Annex 5) and serves as first 
baseline information for future monitoring and reporting after 
the inscription of the sites on the WH List. The structure of the 
system was defined based on the outcomes of meetings held 
with the Central Asian State Parties working on the Silk Roads 
WH nomination and in consultation with international experts 
and the UNESCO WHC. User requirements for this system 
were: (1) easy to use, (2) web-based, allowing exchange of 
information at a transnational level, (3) multilingual, (4) based 
on the corridors concept, (5) able to standardize data types, (6) 
interoperable by importing data from and exporting data to 
other software applications e.g. the nomination dossier, maps or 
other information such as the ICOMOS Silk Roads thematic 
study and expendable to later include other nominations of the 
Silk Roads outside Central Asia, (7) able to track the history 
during the process of nomination and for future monitoring, (8) 
and featuring a user rights management. 
The Silk Roads CHRIS contains three major components: a 
GeoCMS with a configurator, a geospatial database and a 
geographic data server. The GeoCMS has been built using 
recent J2EE technologies and Java standards: Java Server 
Faces, the Seam application framework, the Rich Faces JSF 
toolkit, JSR286 portlets, JPA, and JAXB. It is fully configured 
towards the elaboration of the nomination dossiers for the Silk 
Roads. Specific data models for corridors as well as for their 
component parts have been developed. Every corridor has its 
own settings handled in the GeoCMS configurator. These 
settings include maps with data layers, group layers, legends, 
scale dependency, zoom level, search entries, and number of 
returned columns. All configured information is stored by the 
GeoCMS in the geospatial database and serviced via a 
geographic data server. 
The geospatial database (PostGreSQL/PostGIS) is a centralized 
database, containing geographical information, but also the 
configuration information of the GeoCMS. The open source 
PostGreSQL database is employed; it includes a PostGIS 
extension that provides geospatial capabilities to store 
geographic objects within a spatially enabled CMS. Its 
architecture is recognised for its stability and performance. In 
combination with PostGreSQL/PostGIS, the open source 
GeoServer product is used. GeoServer is an advanced open 
source Geographic Web Service employed to provide 
geographic vector and raster data sets via the OGC Web Map 
Service and Web Feature Service protocols. One of the strong 
points of GeoServer is its easy-to-use web-based configuration 
tool. With GeoServer there is no need to bother with long 
complicated configuration files. 
3.1 Key functionalities 
The Silk Roads CHRIS is a “user friendly" platform 
considering that a number of end-users do not have an in-depth 
experience and expertise in computer science, ICT and GIS. It 
does not require any browser plug-in or applets. The State 
Parties are guided through the online nomination dossier and its 
sections. The whole system is multilingual, for now, in English 
and Russian. New languages can easily be added as all software 
commands, e.g. load, save, as well as tools, tooltips, menus, and 
fields are grouped in a message bundle or data model that can 
then be translated in batch. The system is open and 
interoperable, based on Open Standards for data models and 
formats including metadata, and spatial web services. The use 
of standards facilitates data exchange, querying and allows for 
efficient reuse of data in a variety of other applications. 
195