System informacji przestrzennej o wydarzeniach biblijnych jako narzędzie dokumentowania światowego dziedzictwa kulturowego

Adaptation of methods of cartographic presentation to the growing range of tasks which can be supported by geoinformation technologies is one of very important research challenges in the development of geovisualization, indicated by the International Cartographic Association. In the last few year, cultural heritage combined with the technologies of access and visualization to its sources, has been included to these tasks. More and more often spatial information systems are used for collecting, managing and presentation of information about national and world cultural heritage. The paper presents results of using spatial information systems for documentation of intangible cultural heritage. According to UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, not only traditions and customs, but also historical consciousness create in the community feelings of identity and continuity. This consciousness is also based on traditions and legends derived from religion. In the research project, founded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Institute of Geodesy and Cartography together with the Jagiellonian University from Cracov and Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University from Warsaw have undertaken the research on the concept of a spatio-temporal information system about past events and historical sources. This concept is based on Bible regions and events described in the Old and New Testament. In the paper, two main issues connected with documentation of the Bible events are presented. The first issue is the proposal of the architecture of the system with geographical objects changing in time. Solutions connected with the spatio-temporal data model are presented, showing the state of an object in time and its attributes together with references to the places it occurs in the Bible. The second issue shows the concept of the presentation of Bible events. The method of gathering information about them and the method of events visualisation are presented. The paper shows a proposal of documenting historical events changing in time.