HES▪SIGMA: a new geo-spatial data capture tool for managing the conservation of historic assets
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 24/12/2018

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has worked with Historic Environment Scotland (HES) to develop an integrated digital site assessment system that provides a refined survey process for historic assets. 

HES has a statutory obligation to conserve the 336 properties in care of Scottish Ministers without compromising the cultural significance of the assets. The condition, statutory compliance, operations and interventions associated with these assets must be appropriately recorded, monitored, reported and reviewed. Similar to other heritage agencies, HES needs a system that can store and present conservation and maintenance information for historic assets and be used to plan effective programmes of maintenance and repair. To meet this need, BGS has worked with HES to develop new, customised tools for use within the existing BGS System for Integrated Geoscience Mapping (BGS▪SIGMA)—an integrated workflow underpinned by a geo-spatial platform for data capture and interpretation—resulting in the provision of an application specifically designed to allow the capture of digital data relating to monument condition.

The new system is named HES▪SIGMA. It is built on top of ESRI’s ArcGIS software and is underpinned by a bespoke relational data model. It provides users with the ability to populate custom-built data entry forms to record maintenance issues and repair specifications for architectural elements ranging from individual blocks of stone to entire building elevations. Photographs, sketches, and digital documents can be linked to architectural elements to enhance the usability of the data. 

The benefits of digital data capture with HES▪SIGMA are huge: standardised data formats with supporting dictionaries to constrain the input parameters ensure a high degree of consistency and facilitate data extraction, querying and geospatial analysis; custom-built reporting tools produce fully formatted reports based on collected data; date and time stamps combined with the capability to re-survey monuments at regular intervals facilitates condition monitoring over time, all of which creates a versatile planning tool for scheduling works, specifying materials, identifying skills needed for repairs, and allocating resources.

The digital data collection principles on which HES▪SIGMA is built, i.e. the capability to capture attributed data geospatially, provides many potential applications in conservation, archaeology and similar fields.

E.A. Tracey, N. Smith, K. Lawrie, J. Russell