ICHEPIS – Inventorisation for a Cultural Heritage Periodic Reporting Information System

The direct objective of this two years long project was to define the scope and structure of relevant information and data that could provide flexible and user friendly information and knowledge management solutions of major importance for individual site managers, all States Parties, as well as for the World Heritage Centre of UNESCO, including their Advisory Bodies.

During research, effective methods were to be found in order to integrate all text documents containing valuable scientific data into one data system base and to make them easily available and searchable. In connection with the above, a review of the basic thesaurus of relevant areas and organizations, as far as possible, had to be integrated into a flexible Internet based structure, to provide conversion keys, including search engines, for more effective use of the present knowledge base.

States Parties have to be capable of creating comprehensive site, regional or even thematic collections, learn and create data processing and knowledge management standards, as well as rules to update information and provide meta data services on their own sites. At the same time these models can become a suitable basis for an approved system by the individual States Parties’ World Heritage Information and Knowledge Management System that has to be developed on a step-by-step and incremental basis. Such system enables the State Parties to recognize any relevant changes, including improvement or deterioration or even disaster of world heritage sites in due time. It also enables them to attract partners for mutually beneficial co-operation in protection and development of the sites so that the research can lead them to integrated data models, a structure for training and education, collection, distribution and use of such data, as well as recommendations on data migration.