CULTURAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION USING INTERNET-ENABLED GIS 
Z. Duran a \ A. Garagon Dogru b , G. Toz a 
a ITU, Civil Engineering Faculty, 80626 Maslak Istanbul, Turkey - (duranza, tozg)@itu.edu.tr 
b Bogazici University Kandilli Observatory & ERI Geodesy Dept., Cengelkoy Istanbul, Turkey - garagon@boun.edu.tr 
KEY WORDS: Cultural Heritage, GIS, Internet, Architectural Heritage Conservation, Documentation. 
ABSTRACT: 
Cultural heritage preservation makes necessary to produce an initial technical documentation to be able to establish the plans which 
allow to develop suitable approaches for protecting. Recent developments in the scientific methods of documentation influenced the 
conservation approaches to historic areas. In the past, conservation efforts focused on absolute preservation which meant preventing 
changes. The newer technologies like Geographic Information System (GIS) greatly facilitate the inventory, evaluation, and 
preservation of historic sites and allow heritage structures to be reused by planning alterations. This project presents a research for 
historical documentation and also a presentation using GIS and Internet Technology which allows public access to information. In 
this study, Fatih district of Istanbul was selected as a pilot region because it is one of the oldest settlements of the city that bridges 
the two continents of Europe and Asia. This study represents the interactivity of the Internet users and the spatial data as well. It is 
expected this web-based GIS to help the public to form a view on the development process of their urban environment. System 
monitoring will allow public for change detection and revealing of positive and negative impacts in time. In order to determine 
present status of the study area, data were acquired from different sources. Then those data were compiled by using GIS softwares for 
the purpose of various analysis. Public access to the information is provided on a configured web site by using Internet Map Server 
program. This study serves a software-independent solution to use GIS data and functions. The model facilitates easy maintenance 
and update data. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Today, many of historic urban areas in the world are 
endangered by long term influences like traffic, air pollution or 
destructive events causing heavy damage like earthquakes, fire, 
war etc. For preserving cultural riches, we have to determine 
and register them. It is necessary to produce an initial technical 
documentation to be able to establish the plans that allow for 
developing suitable approaches for protecting. Access to all 
information related to historical areas is the key for the 
protection and presentation. For this enormous amount of 
information, the existence of a heritage information system is 
essential. So the possibility of implementing of an information 
system in maintenance of cultural heritage opens the 
opportunity to control the preservation and interventions. 
The newer technologies like Geographic Information System 
(GIS) greatly facilitate the inventory, evaluation, and 
preservation of historic sites. A GIS is an organized collection 
of computer hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel 
designed to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, 
analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced 
information. Through a variety of data manipulations and 
queries within a GIS, we can answer all questions that are 
necessary for protecting management. 
The spatial information is being shared over the Internet. 
Through distributed geographic information, users have easy 
access to large databases. Internet technology and GIS provides 
a group of advantages to simplify the management and to access 
to the information. Use of internet technologies to provide 
access to spatial information and GIS on the internet provides 
the comprehensive documentation and management of cultural 
In this study, Fatih (Zeyrek) district of Istanbul was selected as 
a pilot region because it is one of the oldest settlements of the 
city that bridges the two continents of Europe and Asia. Zeyrek 
is situated at the slopes of the fourth hill in the Historic 
Peninsula in Istanbul. It is a typical quarter of old Istanbul. The 
district assumed the name of Zeyrek during Ottoman times. As 
in most other areas of old Istanbul, fires have caused much 
devastation in Zeyrek. These fires had a negative effect on the 
social and physical structure of the area. 
2. DATA AND TOOLS 
Data were provided from Municipality of Metropolis Istanbul in 
the scale of 1:1000 digital maps. Data were Micro Station file 
format (dgn). The study area was evaluated in Arc View 
software that is GIS software developed by Environmental 
Systems Research Institute (Figure 1). ArcView was used for 
browsing the data and examining the datasets. ArcView 
shapefile data format stores the geometric and attribute 
information for the spatial features in a data set. A shapefile 
consists of a main file, an index file, and a dBASE table. The 
geometry for a feature is stored as a shape including a set of 
vector coordinates. Shapefiles can support point, line, and area 
features.