About iHMS

This system began as a System Engineering thesis project on ORT University Uruguay. It was sponsored by UNESCO and developed from March 2005 to May 2006.

There are multiple types of heritage around the World, some of them are declared by UNESCO as World Heritage. The goal of the project was to create a system called "integrated Heritage Management System" (iHMS), which has the purpose of of supporting maintenance, analysis and exposure of the data from a heritage's inventory.

iHMS was born as an iniciative from UNESCO and it provides support for the main processes frequently involved on heritage Goods management, these being:
- Good elements inventory information maintenance.
- Heritage goods information analysis.
- Broadcast of Goods related information.

The huge diversity of heritage types, information neccesity diversity, and differences associated with using system on several countries (e.g. language), caused the first challenge for the project. The system must be generic enough to be able to adapt to any heritage without being modified. The second challenge lies on the fact that this is a Geographical Information System (GIS), based non complex and uncommon technologies, involving layer management and geographical information.

This system was developed as an open source project, so that it can be used and/or adapted by any person or organization without requiring a licence.

The purpose of the system is to provide the neccesary functionality to assist on management and maintenance of of the Worldwide Heritage Goods.

The administration of the heritage implies the management of the information of its goods. These goods can range from a song to a paiting, a house or a historical neighborhood.

The system developed on this project allows the inventory to be digitalized and help on the analysis and broadcast of the information. All of this allows to adapt it to the needs of each heritage's inventory without needing to have advanced technical knowledge.

One of the most important innovations for inventory management with this system is on the functionality which makes iHMS a GIS. This systems allow to obtain geographical location from particular information, e.g. obtaining a monument's location on a map. Also, aditional information can be obtained from a location on the map, like pictures of the buildings on the historical downtown of Olida city, by selecting its location on the map.

Another relevan aspect is that, once the inventory is finished, and stored on the system, the goods can have multiple images and documents associated to them. Once this documents, which can be of historical nature, legal or turístico, are stored in the system, they can be associated with goods for easy access to all members of the organization which manages the heritage, as well as the users which access them via Internet.

Modules

Templates and Reports Editor

The system adapts to the needs of every organization by defining the information that it will require. This can be obtained by designing templates from which the information will be managed. This functionality allows the system to be completely generic and adaptable, causing minimum impact, and allowing to do so without advanced technical knowledge.

Inventory Management

The center of heritage management lies on the management of inventory information from the elements of the Goods. Once the neccesary information about the goods is defined, the maintenance is performed with this module. The neccesary mechanisms to locate this information on maps and to use the same, trough searchs, statistical queries or layers is provided.

Web Module

When the information for the goods is defined, it is also indicated is that information can be published or not. The Web structure can be generated after the information is stored and its respective geographical references are located.