Integration between the Guimarães municipal WebGIS and the cultural heritage management platform of the HEREDITAS project.
The context
Cultural heritage is bound to places, buildings, landscapes and routes. Relating heritage information to the territory makes it possible to understand that heritage not merely as a set of records, but as part of a cultural landscape.
The work
Between 2020 and 2021, Waymotion adapted the WebGIS of the Município de Guimarães in order to integrate it into the HEREDITAS — Atlas da Paisagem Cultural de Guimarães project.
The solution established the link between the municipal WebGIS and the In patrimonium heritage management system. Each platform kept the information belonging to its own domain: the heritage system as the main repository of alphanumeric and documentary content, and the WebGIS as the repository of the location and geographic representation of the assets.
Through web services and a shared identification key, it became possible to consult in the WebGIS the information held in the heritage records, and to make the georeferenced data available to the heritage system. The integration also allowed users to move directly between the two applications, opening on the map the territorial setting of the element being consulted, or reaching its heritage record from its geographic representation.
Waymotion created and modelled the geographic entities required, developed the interoperability mechanisms and adapted the WebGIS interface to the visual identity of HEREDITAS.
What it left behind
Presented publicly in April 2021, the project brought catalogue, chronology and map together into an integrated reading of the inheritance, memory and identity of Guimarães. Waymotion’s contribution gave heritage information a territorial expression, bringing the knowledge about each asset closer to the place and the landscape it belongs to.
