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CI PA 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
interest and the understanding for monuments. At the same time 
a long-term preservation of these documents is necessary. 
Mapping and collection of registered monuments in a GIS for 
the cultural heritage on basis of digitised, older maps enable the 
automated analysis of developments of a region or a settlement 
area and simplify the error tracing in the existing monument 
list. 
permits the user to provide objects of the application with a 
differentiated time relation and to create inquiries or forecasts. 
A temporal GIS generally connects the stored, georeferenced 
database objects with a time term: in the ideal case it spans a 
4d-space (spatial + temporal relationship of the thematic data) 
in contrast to 2,5 and/or 3d-GIS (only spatial + thematic data). 
2.4.2 Planning 
Municipalities, citizens and representatives of the economy 
spent much time and energy in the regional development of 
rural area to acquire and evaluate basic data, to formulate ideas 
and to produce an acceptance of these ideas in the broad public. 
An important task of the rural development is to be seen in 
preservation and passing on of the cultural heritage. Often 
earlier steps of development are conserved as vestiges in the 
culture landscape and in the settlements. Increasingly such 
certifications of the past are included into the documentation 
and analysis of planning procedures in order to come to 
identity-securing and at the same time future-arranged 
solutions. The collection and documentation of historical 
information and vestiges about culture landscape and 
architectural monuments, place names etc. in a GIS can thereby 
supply a significant contribution to planning procedures like 
landscape planning, project planning or regional developments. 
2.4.3 Tourism 
In the field of tourism the historical places of interest show the 
characteristic of the region. 
In this case the request and visualisation possibilities of a GIS 
for cultural heritage could be used for the advertisement of the 
region. Examples are information about historical architectural 
monuments, churches and monasteries, castles and chateaus, 
museums, as well as culture landscapes such as protected areas, 
nature and cultural monuments in the landscape or local 
recreation areas. 
2.4.4 Local history and education 
A GIS for the cultural heritage could contribute to the 
intermediation of historical values out of the preservation of 
monuments and local history to citizens and schools. 
More and more traditions are lost and knowledge about the own 
local history is often limited to a few persons, like interested 
private people or the honorary persons, who take care of all 
things concerning local history. 
On the one hand this knowledge should be archived in order to 
receive it to future generations, on the other hand to make it 
accessible for a larger public. 
Through the integration or co-operation with a portal offerer 
and therefor the presentation in the world wide web, the GIS 
can be opened for a wide field of users. 
3. CONCEPT OF SOLUTION 
3.1 Temporal GIS 
While conventional GIS offer extensive possibilities for the 
collection and analysis of spatial and thematic geo data, a temp 
oral GIS should support the user during decision making in 
complex temporal questions. Today there are already several 
beginnings to handle temporal data in GIS, e.g. as time attribute 
in the Snapshot model. For a more versatile appliance a 
temporal extension of the GIS database is necessary, which 
A historical GIS is a special case of an temporal GIS. Here 
particularly historical data of the past are stored. So far as 
possible these data are spatially and temporally referenced. 
Then the analysis of spatiotemporal data over several epochs 
enables pointing out changes of objects and making statements 
about their prospective development. 
Objects in a historical GIS cannot only be determined in fixed 
time intervals like it is mostly accepted in current database 
systems (e.g. time series option of Oracle 8i). It should be 
possible to define free times and time intervals, which are 
determined by incidental events of the real world. 
Also the uncertainties of temporal definition of the historical 
events must be considered. 
In an temporal GIS spatiotemporal inquiry types can occur, 
which can refer to individual objects as well as to larger 
structures (Ebeling 1999): 
• a simple temporal inquiry of a point of time, e.g. an 
object status 
• a temporal inquiry concerning a period, e.g. the 
change of an object during a period 
• a simple spatiotemporal inquiry concerning a sector of 
2d/3d space at a point of time 
• a inquiry of a space-time span, i.e the variation of a 
sector of the 2d/3d space during a period. 
Last but not least animations and dynamic interactive maps do 
contribute to the efficient visualisation of spatiotemporal data of 
the database. 
3.2 Modelling 
The requirements analysis from the workshop entered into a 
modelling process (cp. Figure 3). Goal of modelling is the 
transformation of the real world into a model in order to be able 
to process it in a computer system. Objects of the real world are 
represented in a data model with their attributes and 
relationships as well as their behaviour. Data modelling starts 
with the choice of a sektor of the real world. In the case of a 
temporal GIS this sektor is not only determined by spatial 
coordinates, but also by temporal characteristics, e.g. over a 
period of the past. 
Figure 3. Modelling process from real world into a geo 
database