CIPA 2003 XIX 1 ' 1 International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey
41
At the end of the paper the status of the project will be
described.
2. WORKSHOP TO ANALYSE THE REQUIREMENTS
OF A TEMPORAL GIS FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE
Regional distinctions are among other things characterised by
historical traces of the cultural heritage, which are still visible
in the cultural landscape and settlements. According to
requirements extensive stocktakings of the historical village
structure are made in the run-up of projects of the district office
of rural development in Bavarian villages.
These contain surveys to nature area and locality, settlement
history, development of the village structure, buildings and
monuments characterising the historical local picture as well as
the historical cultural landscape. On the one hand they serve as
valuable planning basis for projects of redevelopment of
villages and on the other hand they are of great value for
municipalities and their citizens and should therefore be made
available to a large circle of persons.
Since this information in maps, texts and pictures is acquired
and mapped so far in analogous form, the question came up,
whether this information should be stored in the future in a
geographical information system, in which the historical data
could be archived, as well as analysed and visualised with
regard to their spatiotemporal relations.
Therefore in the year 2001 several representatives of
municipalities, preservation of monuments, rural development,
tourism and education met to a workshop in the Achental and
discussed the requirements and possible user scenarios to a GIS
for the cultural heritage.
2.1 Content and object areas
A GIS for cultural heritage should be open for all contents and
object areas, which refer to anthropogenic historical activities,
which had been reflected in the landscape and in the settlements
in the form of elements and structures and/or which transformed
and influenced landscape and settlement structure. Thereby it is
useful to organise the objects into different functional areas, e.g.
religion/state/military, settlement, traffic, agriculture, trade,
spare time etc..
2.2 Data
A substantial advantage of a GIS is the combined use of
geometric and alphanumerical data. Geometric and
alphanumerical data about the cultural heritage of an area must
be gathered from many different sources of authorities,
institutions, companies and private people. These data are often
available in different formats and with different quality and can
be integrated in a GIS only by conversion and adjustment (cp.
Figure 2).
The geometric data consists mainly of maps, which are
available partly digitally or in case of historical data frequently
only in analogue form.
More current maps are partially available in vector data form,
older maps only as raster data sets. Historical maps also have
the problem of equalisation. Above all very old maps are rather
works of art, which would lose their special character after a
transformation into a today's geographical reference system.
Thematic data and photos of
historical objects
from different archive
(e.g. from competent local persons)
Figure 2. Several data in GIS for cultural heritage
The alphanumerical data is available as different historical
texts from private archives and official data collections, e.g. the
register of real estate tax. Many of these sources are not in a
computer-readable form and also not suitable for text
recognition software.
Additionally to the text data multimedia data offer themselves
for the affiliation to a geo information system for cultural
heritage, e.g. historical or current photographs, video material
of certain objects, or audio records of surrounding nature.
All these data have to be provided with meta data when they
are stored into a geo information system. Meta data contain
additional information about the actual data sets, like data
source or quality of data, and they are especially important for
historical data in order to assure the verifiableness and
authenticity of the data.
All in all collection and evaluation of historical data can be
difficult, because historical data often are not exactly detectable,
not in digital form, additionally incomplete or contradictory .
2.3 Functionality
Generally following demands are made on the functionality of
an temporal GIS for cultural heritage:
• Sustainable stocktaking and documentation
• Combined spatial, temporal and thematic selection
and analysis of culture-historical objects
• Visualisation of spatial and temporal processes
• Simple access to information for different target
groups
2.4 User szenarios
A GIS for the cultural heritage in the Achental should
particularly be useful for development of economy and tourism.
Beyond that further usage should be considered in preservation
of monument and historic buildings, in different planning
procedures, in local history and education.
2.4.1 Preservation of monuments
Historical data about monuments and historical buildings are
partly contained in very valuable and fragile documents. They
should be made accessible for a larger public to promote the
