Cultural Heritage emergency:

The analysis and understanding of processes of decay, in the case of historical buildings and monumental architecture, call for an interpretative overview encompassing data which stem from different areas of study but are globally interrelated and constitute essential elements for the purpose of assessing the state of preservation. ARKIS Architecture Recovery Knowledge Information System is an Information System configured in AVENUE programming language (by ESRI), set up as an auxiliary tool for the organisation, representation and utilisation of knowledge of data in the recovery of historical buildings. Based on GIS technology transposed to an architectonic scale, it regards the architectural item, its immediate context and its territorial location. ARKIS is user friendly and represents an operative tool for different Organisation, for example monuments offices or agencies. To this end, mainly important is to create transfer environments and use of knowledge, through a set up of multi-medial data base in remote access, for disseminating heterogeneous information into Internet (alpha-numerical data, geometrical data, images) which are based upon the needs of potential users (researchers, designers, architects, restorers, decision makers). ARKIS-NET, here presented, is based on the ArcIMS software package and provides the foundation for disseminating high-end heterogeneous data, organised and represented in GIS form, and mapping services via Internet. Clients may display, query, and analysis information in an easy-to-use Web browser, and also integrate local data sources with Internet data sources. Some case history will be presented.