European Mining Database North Rhine – Westphalia (emd-nrw): a Mashup for Intuitive Usage of Archive Data

The European Mining Database for North Rhine Westphalia (EMD-NRW) has the objective to present information about the industrial heritage of mining in an intuitive web mapping application. With the increasing abandonment of these industrial objects, especially in the area of NRW, the digital preservation of information, locations and relations between and about these objects is important. These historic sites and the transformation from an industrial area to a new polycentric metropolis is also a key focus of the European Capital of Culture 2010 "Essen for the Ruhr". The EMD-NRW system is capable of representing the complex, hierarchical structure of archive data and connecting this data to their geographic location. Comprehensive information is available about every object. A combination (mashup) of own geodata and data of Microsoft’s Bing Maps is used. For beginners and experts information are easy to retrieve because of the intuitive design.