A document management system for the conservation of cultural heritage buildings

A document management system (DcMS) for the efficient organization and visualization of the data related to conservation projects in cultural heritage buildings applied to a case study is presented. The objective of the system is to allow for the interchange of information between different specialists, to prevent the loss of data through time and to promote technical awareness of general public. For this purpose, a database for the management of the information involved in the works carried out in the Monastery of Santa Maria de Salzedas (Portugal) was created. The newly developed system collects the information about the Monastery produced in a period of five years by different specialists (architects, engineers, geologists, physicists and material scientists). The system is fully web based and includes a Back-End for easy uploading of information and a Front-End for automatic visualization and downloading of the information. Both Back- and Front-End are accessible via an Internet connection.The DcMS presented here is part of the project POCTI-HEC-60431-2004, Integrated approach for conservation and valuation of monuments, funded by FCT (Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation). F. Pena acknowledges funding from the FCT grant contract SFRH/BPD/17449/2004. The system was programmed by Engineers Ana Lima and Daniel Oliveira of the Centre of Computer Graphics (CCG)