HERA, cataloging digital system
The Paestum and Velia Archeological Park is one of the most important archaeological museums in the South of Italy. An hour from Salerno, it is located in the ancient city of Paestum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. A fascinating place, both for visitors and archaeologists and other professionals, in 2019 alone welcomed almost 450,000 visitors.
We conceived HERA to help organize the work of the park’s academics, technicians and clerks. The platform is a digital system for cataloging, managing and studying the site’s cultural heritage, which can be consulted in real-time and remotely with any device with internet access.
CLIENT Parco Archeologico di Paestum e Velia
YEAR 2018
FEATURES
- Digital cataloging, management, study system
- Scalable project
- UX/UI Design
- Data geolocation
- Supports multiple formats: audio, video, images and text
- Designed for different audiences (professionals and general public)
- Simple and intuitive open-source graphic interface
- Easily manageable backend
- Integrated app with cataloging system
- Hierarchical user management
Project
Thanks to new technologies, it has been possible to create an integrated digital system that catalogs, manages and studies all kinds of data related to the archaeological zone of Paestum and Velia. The examples range from topographic maps, maintenance or restoration interventions, excavation tests and deposit and conservation of findings to administrative archives, scientific publications, bibliography and multimedia material.
With the help of archaeologists and collaborators, it was possible to gather, digitize and systematize the files that already existed in several sources in the site’s archives. During this initial phase, part of the investigation aimed to recover unpublished, misplaced, or unsystematically collected data.
HERA unifies all the information under a single platform, a web system that allows managing archaeological heritage in a shared, efficient and scalable way. The platform is fully updated: all its elements are georeferenced and linked to a complementing record cataloged according to ICCD standards. These files detail all the information related to the component they reference, which is expandable by attaching multimedia files, images, photographs, reliefs, drawings and other types of material.
There are different types of sheets depending on their content:
- Monuments
- Findings
- Research interventions (excavation tests, prospecting, surveys, etc.)
- Maintenance and restoration interventions
- Files (divided into two categories: scientific and administrative)
As a result, we obtained a circular system where monuments, findings and research are connected through specific topographical, archaeological and factual relationships.
The goal was to recreate the contextual link between the preserved objects and the places where they were found, the investigations that brought them into the light and the documentation relating to them.
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
PROGRAMMING
- Laravel
- Leaflet
- MySQL
SOFTWARE
- MySQL Workbench
USER MANAGEMENT
The use of HERA is intended for both professionals and visitors, who can access it remotely in real-time. We developed the graphic language of the interface with open source, so its navigation is simple and intuitive.
Thanks to the use of SIMOVI, a smart management system, users are organized hierarchically and are classified into five levels, ranging from 0 to 4. The levels are assigned based on their roles, which determine the functions they can access. While students have the lowest rank and can only see certain documentation, the highest level has been designated for the people in charge of the site, who have full access to the entire platform.
AN INTERACTIVE INTEGRATED SYSTEM
HERA centralizes in a single system all the functions related to the archaeological process, and in doing so it highlights its interactive and flowing nature. At the same time, it allows responding to professional needs and constantly updating information quality, which becomes a continuous cultural stream that gives visibility, transparency and dissemination to archaeological knowledge, which, in the end, is everyone’s heritage.
