Client: General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums, Syria
The project is subdivided in two smaller projects: "Creation of a Cultural Heritage DB" and "Implementation of the relevant GIS".
The overall objective is the realization of a Database system of Art, Architecture and Archaeological cultural heritage of Syria ready to integrate a Geographic Information System. The system will be realized following the "CIDOC object-oriented Conceptual Reference Model" (CRM) developed by the ICOM/CIDOC Documentation Standards Group into the ISO 21127.
The primary role of the CIDOC CRM is to serve as a basis for mediation of cultural heritage information and thereby to provide the semantic 'glue' needed to transform localized information sources into a coherent and valuable global resource.
The intended purpose of the DB may be defined as the realization of a "container" of information required for the documentation of cultural heritage collections, with a view to enabling wide area information exchange and integration of heterogeneous sources.
The GIS system is realized using the existing (and/or in progress) database for the inventory of Syrian Cultural Heritage. Starting from this database a Geographic System is realized selecting the appropriate reference system of projection for Syria, with full compatibility with GPS systems in WGS84 reference.
This will be achieved using GeoUML (Unified Modelling Language) with depending Data Models UML as basic of database Design in order to have the possibility to modify as needed. The geographical database is realized using the work done in the database of the inventory of Syrian Cultural Heritage through Case tools in Oracle.
The goal of enabling information exchange and integration between heterogeneous sources determines the constructs and level of detail of the GIS system. It also determines its perspective, which is necessarily supra-institutional and abstracted from any specific local context. The goal of enabling information exchange and integration between other cultural institutions all over the World through standards adopted internationally.
The goal is to show to the Internet the Geographic Information System of Syrian Cultural Heritage.
The key points of the system are the following:
- insert of Geographical Elements "Feature Classes" able to represent the location of sites and monuments; the collections will be located as belonging to the building "container";
- identification of the appropriate system of projection with definition of the accuracy of geographical data.
- insert of Feature Datasets with control of topology, geometric network and relationships;
- insert of Object Classes "Tables". This tables represents non geographical positions but related with it like statistical tables.
Spatial reference:
- identification of the descriptive data for all the geographical elements;
- identification of Topological relationship between the feature classes;
- images, satellite and aerial, identification and archiving with compression engine.
Adoption of metadata:
- verification and / or identification for the IDs with the cooperation of DGAM.