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The Middle Eastern Geodatabase for Antiquities (MEGA): An Open Source GIS-Based Heritage Site Inventor y and Management System
- Change Over Time
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2012
- pp. 32-57
- 10.1353/cot.2012.a476318
- Article
- Additional Information
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The emergence of new digital technologies and rapidly spreading Internet access together present possibilities for widely accessible, Web-based national information systems for the inventory and management of heritage sites. The increasing development of open source software tools further provides that such systems may be purpose-built, adaptable, and extensible to the needs of specific situations, and that once developed they can be available to heritage authorities, which are often poorly funded, without associated licensing or upgrade fees.
Working collaboratively with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA), the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and World Monuments Fund (WMF) have developed MEGA-Jordan as a tool to inventory, monitor, and help conserve and manage the thousands of archaeological sites in Jordan. MEGA-Jordan allows DoA officials to address needs such as infrastructure and development control and the development of national and regional research strategies. MEGA-Jordan is Web based, bilingual (Arabic-English), and was developed using state-of-the-art and open source information technologies. It was designed to be modular and easily extensible, allowing it to evolve with the DoA's changing institutional requirements and to be adapted by other countries. The MEGA-Jordan system is available online at