Organizations worldwide are using Arches and listed below are several implementations that have been shared with us. If you would like your implementation listed here please contact us providing a brief description, a screenshot, and a link to your implementation if it has been made public.
Getty Research Institute Archival Collection Tools: Research Collections Viewer and 12 Sunsets (October 2020): Getty Digital, in collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, has developed two new platforms powered by data managed in Arches. The Research Collections Viewer offers a way to discover and view the Getty Research Institute’s archival collections, while 12 Sunsets is an interactive exploration of the artist Ed Ruscha’s archive documenting the streets of Los Angeles. Containing item-level metadata such as geolocation coordinates, computer vision tags, OCR text, and addresses, Arches is one of the data management systems driving both experiences. This single Arches implementation allows for recontextualizing the metadata and building unique experiences for different audiences. Containing over 100,000 resources, this is the Getty Research Institute’s first use of the platform in production.
Barbados National Registry of Historic Places (September 2020): The Barbados Ministry of Creative Economies, Culture and Sports, in cooperation with the Organization of American States, established the Barbados instance of Arches as the official repository of its newly created National Registry of Historic Places. Coherit Associates LLC, working in the context of an OAS Project funded by the U.S. Permanent Mission to the OAS, customized and branded the site and trained ministry staff in its use. The instance was installed by Legion GIS LLC. This Arches implementation represents an important step forward in local participation in heritage designation, through its community-based nomination procedure.
Jamaica National Inventory of Historic Places (September 2020): The Jamaica instance of Arches is the result of cooperation between the Jamaica Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport and the Organization of American States, in a project funded by the U.S. Permanent Mission to the OAS. It is maintained and updated by the staff of the Jamaica National Heritage Trust. This instance of Arches emphasizes community engagement through public nominations of significant sites. Branding and customization were completed by Dr. Angela Labrador of Coherit Associates, who also led the staff training within the context of the OAS project. This instance of Arches was installed by Legion GIS LLC.
Jersey Historic Environment Record (May 2020): Jersey Heritage Trust have developed an essential tool for researching heritage in the Island and managing its future. It brings together a wealth of information about the Island’s historic environment for the first time. The comprehensive database is free to use and can be found at her.jerseyheritage.org. It includes everything from historic buildings, maps, landscapes, battlefield sites, local folklore, archaeological sites and finds. The HER provides a major research tool for members of the public, commercial operations and academics alike, allowing people to carry out searches in different ways.
Qionglin Settlement, Kinmen County, Taiwan (January 2020): The Kinmen Qionglin Settlement Survey aims to establish the information and digital resources of cultural heritage based on the concept of Cultural Heritage Lifecycle in different types, including the data of basic designated registrations, surveys, management-and-maintenances. This program is conducted by the China University of Technology with support from the Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Taiwan Ministry of Culture.
Maldives Heritage Survey (May 2019): The Maldives Heritage Survey works to systematically inventory and document endangered cultural heritage in the Maldives, including mosques, cemeteries, the remains of Buddhist temple complexes, and other historical structures and physical objects. The materials documented in our database are vulnerable to both natural and human threats that jeopardize the survival and accessibility of historical information for this vital node in pre-modern economic and religious networks spanning the Indian Ocean world and beyond. The project is led by Michael Feener, based at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and funded by Arcadia. Work in country in conducted in partnership with the Maldives Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage, and the international collaboration of the SaieLab at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Earth Observatory of Singapore at Nanyang Technological University.
Nepal Heritage Documentation Project (NHDP) (April 2019): NHDP’s first commitment is to historical monuments and objects that are spread across the Kathmandu Valley. Today, these monuments still play important roles in the active social and religious habitats of the old town of Patan. However, many of them are endangered due to the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes, urban transformation, and dramatic demographic shifts that occur with economic and social change. Supported by the charitable fund Arcadia, the project documents the historical and anthropological ‘biographies’ as well as the current state and use of the monuments. NHDP is founded on expertise in extensive heritage documentation fieldwork in Nepal, data management and the development of Digital Archive of Nepalese Arts and Monuments (DANAM) since October 2018. All content published in DANAM is freely available in an open access format.
MALAKA.net Heritage Project (March 2019): MALAKA.net is an information and management platform for the historical heritage of the municipality of Málaga, Spain. Created to inventory, locate and assist in its management, it also offers the possibility of showing citizens and researchers the architectural, landscape, archaeological, urban furniture and intangible heritage included in official lists and catalogues of protection. It was implemented as part of an agreement on research and technology transfer between the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the University of Málaga, the Institute UMA-UPC for Habitat- Tourism-Territory, and the Municipal Housing Institute of the Málaga City Council for the implementation of activities of protection, preservation and enhancement of Málaga’s heritage.
Global Digital Heritage (February 2019): Global Digital Heritage (GDH) is a not-for-profit, private research and education organization dedicated to documenting, monitoring, and preserving our global cultural and natural heritage. GDH uses Arches to make digital data on nearly 100 sites and 300 artifacts (e.g. 3D models, point clouds and geospatial information) freely available to the public. With collaborations in Portugal, France, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and elsewhere, Arches is the key to creating a digital research environment for sharing 3D data.
Heritage Monitoring Scouts (August 2018): Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS Florida) is a public engagement program of the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) focused on tracking changes to archaeological sites at risk, particularly those impacted by climate change in the form of erosion and sea level rise. The program launched a major update in August 2018, implementing Arches to power its portal to record and manage participants and their contributions to the program.
ARCADE (May 2018): ARCADE (Access Resource for Conservation and Archaeology in a Development Environment) is a publicly-accessible and powerful system to inventory, map, describe, and help protect the rich cultural heritage of the City of Lincoln, UK, which spans from Roman times to the present. For a video about the project, visit https://youtu.be/d_slIt0tefk.
Armed Forces Retirement Home (AFRH) (July 2016): The AFRH Information and Resource Inventory System (IRIS) is the first federal implementation of Arches in the United States. As a federal agency, AFRH manages a 272-acre historic campus in Washington, DC that has been in continuous operation as a retirement home for veterans since the 1850s. AFRH IRIS makes valuable research on this historic property available to the public, while allowing AFRH and its staff to manage its campus planning and federal environmental compliance activities.
Zbiva (May 2016): Zbiva is an archaeological database that covers sites dating from the early Middle Ages that are located in the eastern Alps and its surrounding regions. It includes sites in Slovenia, Austria, on the NW Croatian coast, and in the NE regions in Italy, which are sometimes compared to sporadic sites from the neighbouring areas and also from the previous era.
Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (October 2015): The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project based at Oxford University is using Arches to record archaeological sites and landscapes that are under threat across the Middle East and North Africa, including from rapid population growth, urban expansion, agricultural development, warfare, and looting.
Early Watercraft (September 2015): Early Watercraft is a research project at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, that has deployed Arches to present information on early Slovenian logboats and potentially provide a framework to manage and publish data on early watercraft throughout the world. See: Bojan Kastelic, et al., “Global Database of Early Watercraft: Beginnings, Development and Future Plans,” IKUWA6 Shared Heritage: Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress for Underwater Archaeology, Western Australian Maritime Museum, Fremantle, September 2020: 513-23.
Philippine Heritage Map (August 2015): A Manila-based nonprofit has implemented Arches as the Philippine Heritage Map in order to publish online information collected through an ongoing national-scale heritage survey of the Philippines.
American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) Cultural Heritage Initiatives for Syria and Iraq (May 2015): ASOR is using Arches as part of its collaboration with the US Department of State to further its aims of documenting damage, promoting global awareness, sharing information with other organizations around the world, and planning emergency and post-war responses concerning the war-torn cultural heritage of Syria and areas of Islamic State activity within Iraq. Although ASOR’s implementation has not been made publicly accessible further information can be found on the initiatives’ website.
HistoricPlacesLA (February 2015): The City of Los Angeles, USA, has deployed Arches as HistoricPlacesLA, the official Los Angeles Historic Resources Inventory, to serve both as a tool to fulfill its obligations under federal, state, and local historic preservation laws and to make information publicly accessible.
To stay up-to-date on project news, sign up for the Arches project announcement list or join the Arches discussion forum.
