Creating an Endangered Wooden Architecture Database

Snap shot of Arches displaying GIS information 

[image captured from 

Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP)]

One of the aims of EWAP is to create a long-term open-access digital repository hosting documentation of endangered wooden architecture recorded from around the world. The archive  allows free and open online access to the architectural information generated by the programme, where users can read, download, share, print, or search the information, and use it in education or in any other non-commercial way under the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Any kind of digital content can be open access, from texts and data to software, audio, video, and multi-media.

To achieve this aim, we began to develop an Arches database. Arches is an open-source data management platform that is freely available to install and which we could configure to our needs. Arches grew out of a collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund to address the widespread need within the international heritage field for low-cost digital inventories that are easy to use, are customisable and allow for the creation and management of heritage information in all its richness and diversity. Today it is used by a wide range of organisations and projects, from Heritage at Risk (EAMENA) to the Jamaica National Inventory of Historic Places.

An aisled frame outlined in the EWAP Glossary of Terms

To design a unique archive for EWAP we looked at how users would use the archive. What would people search for if they are interested in the construction of a certain building type or are interested in structures that contain a certain joint, or someone who is simply interested in a particular region’s building techniques? There are many architectural terms that exist, but we created a set of keywords to support searches in Arches and to maintain a referencing consistency across the different structures being recorded. To support these keywords a Glossary of Terms was created that contained images and descriptions of each key term. This too is available open access.

Arches also displays location-based data, so users can visually see on a map where structures are located. The system is compatible with desktop GIS applications (such as ESRI’s ArcGIS, Google Earth, or Quantum GIS), modern web browsers, and online mapping services. Arches is still being developed with periodic version releases (currently on version 7.2.1). Although the main language of Arches is English the recent updates have allowed us to input multiple languages, allowing users to see a translation of some of the descriptions of the metadata. 

The EWAP Arches is now complete and will begin trials over the next few months while the first-year grantees begin sending us data.