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Cemetery Information System: A Case Study in Sivas City

Conference Paper · December 2017

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 UCTEA International Geographical Information Systems Congress 2017, 15-18 November 2017, Adana, Turkey.

Cemetery Information System: A Case Study in Sivas City

1,2
, Esra Makara1, Atilla Altun1 1
, 2 2
,
Adem Seller3 1,*

1
Cumhuriyet University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Geomatics Engineering, 58140, Sivas, Turkey
2
Sivas Municipality, Directorate of Information Processing, Sivas, Turkey
3
Universal Information Technology, Turkey

Abstract

The Cemetery Information System (CIS) is one of the most important service areas offered by the local governments in our country to
citizens. In this respect, many municipalities are striving to provide more efficient and effective service by trying to provide these
nya
municipalities, provide these services with web-based GIS. In this study, it is aimed to collect all the existing data in Sivas Municipality
Cemetery Directorate in a common database, to create digital maps of cemeteries, to integrate the death certificates obtained from the
Provincial Health Directorate and other related non-geographical data, to make them inquirable and analyzable, and to present them
to the citizens for use on the internet. With this work, citizens will be able to access the information of their relatives died in the cemetery
via internet, they will be able to see the locations and photographs of the graves on their screens and get the maps showing the locations
of the graves. In addition, the citizens who want to visit the graves of their relatives will be able to easily find the graves. Thus, they
will be able to get better quality and more efficient service by Sivas Municipality.

Keywords
GIS, Web-based GIS, Cemetery Information System

1. Introduction

Nowadays, there is a very rapid flow of population around the world from rural to urban areas. This movement causes
rapid urbanization and urbanization problems and therefore requires regular urbanization planning (Morova, 2006). This
necessity reveals the importance of the concept of regular urbanization needs, planning, urban management and
information systems. In order to provide more qualified services in the cities, they need accurate and rapidly accessible
data/information within an effective decision support mechanism. It has emerged that data need to be gathered in a single
platform in order to effectively provide local government services such as transportation, technical infrastructure, control
of social facilities, planning and social assistance. Local governments needed to create "knowledge management" and
"management facilities" in order to be able to provide their services effectively and directed them to create their own
location based information systems in order to have the city. Urban Information System (UIS), known as the application
of GIS at the urban level, has begun to be preferred to local administrations in this sense (Kocaman, 2012).
Another concept that is as important as the birth and life events of people in nature is death. As a result, the necessity
of managing the cemetery areas in cities correctly and effectively has increased the importance of the Cemetery
Information System (CIS) in the UIS. CIS; fast, economical and planned decision support system by using the latest
technologies for business and operations related to the management and use of cemeteries, which is one of the main
offices of all municipalities (Kocaman, 2012). CIS is a system that allows planning of new burial sites, which allows
collecting, interrogating and analyzing all data (existing maps, burial documents, cemetery records, geographical / non-
geographical information, death documents etc.) found under the Directorate of Cemetery under a single roof (Ankara

r Belediyesi, 2017). With the

help of this system citizens, information about their deceased relatives; they can be accessed from the interactive kiosks
kept in the entrance doors of the cemeteries, as well as on the internet. They can see the locations of the graves on the
screen and take the map output showing the short path routes. The printed output of the Cemetery Directorate and other
related units used in the burial process is also prepared automatically by this system (Kocaman, 2012).
Information can be shared with internal and external institutions via CIS. Statistical information about the deaths of
the deceased persons, such as the reasons of medical mortality, male and female ratios, age groups, etc., are presented to
the user with graphic or tablelay. Cemetery, door, island, parcel, road, green area, grave sites and family cemetery
planning can easily be done and documents for allocation of places can be given (Kocaman, 2012). In this study, tens of
thousands of dead records were entered into the database through the designed system which is in the cemeteries of the
Sivas municipality and all the new and existing cemeteries to be created, and the locations of the graveyards were
transferred to the GIS environment by using related software. With this study, it is aimed to realize the following processes
in a GIS-based environment as a whole.
Presentation of the municipal services required by the age,
Shortening time required for finding burials searched and providing the use of effective time for visitors and
municipality personals

* Corresponding Author: Tel: +90 (346) 219 10 10 - 2438

E-mail: [email protected]
Cemetery Information System: A Case Study in Sivas City

Obtaining output of the optimum path by the optimum path analysis and the main points in the cemetery on the
map,
Decreasing of confusion and workload due to visitor intensity on special visit days (Fridays, special days etc.)
Geographical planning for future burials in the cemeteries,
Providing online information for staff and citizens via internet.

2. Study Area

Sivas province was chosen as the study area (Fig.

Cemetery, and funeral procedures and other services are put into practice in cemeteries located in different regions. In
this context; there are seven different cemeteries in directorate of
-Muslim Cemetery, also known as

The sum of the total reconstruction area of

Cemetery area, which has been subjected to about 2,000 burials per year according to the statistics, will have met the need
of the province for the next 40 years (if not an extraordinary situation). In total there are 55,000 registered graves. It is
estimated that there are around 25,000 unnamed anonymous graves. Thus, the total number of burials is around 80,000.

Figure 1: Study area

3. Materials and Methods

In the scope of this study, the process steps described in Figure 2 were carried out.

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 Figure 2: Workflow chart developed for this study

The system architecture is organized by examining existing data in the municipality. Afterwards, database design and
general framework were performed by UML (Unified Modeling Language) diagrams. Feature classes such as the
cemetery borders, the owner, the city block, the structure, the road, the parcel were created in the database. In addition,
the metadata of existing data is organized and integrated into the system. On the other hand, ortho-images of 2007, 2012,
2016 and 2017 of the study area were obtained. Data integration for missing data has been put into practice on the field
and the accuracy of the data has been tested.
ArcGIS software was used in the study. The topological rules required for each of feature classes have been applied.
The network structure of the data defining the topological associations is established (Network dataset). Thus, the existing
geographical and non-geographical data integrated in the GIS environment are queryable and analyzable (Fig.3). After
transferring all data to the database, the metadata of each feature class and table were defined in the relevant fields (Fig.4).

245
Cemetery Information System: A Case Study in Sivas City

Figure 3: Feature classes and tables created on ArcGIS software

Figure 4: Metadata created on the system

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4. Results and Discussion

As a result of these studies, CIS, which was created in ArcMap, was published on the internet with the help of a platform
independent user interface program developed within this study. The web page is currently available at
http://mezarlik.sivas.bel.tr/mezarlik/

Figure 5: Platform-independent web environment

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Cemetery Information System: A Case Study in Sivas City

Figure 6: Query by user-interface program developed on ArcGIS

Figure 7: Query grave on the web environment

5. Conclusions

The aim of CIS, which has different versions in many local governments in our country, to provide better quality services
to the citizens, to satisfy the religious and spiritual needs of the people living in the city, to ensure that they are satisfied
with the services without difficulty, and to provide facilities for decision makers in planning. With this study, cemetery
works which is one of the most important, complex and indispensable activities in municipalities have been solved with
the help of GIS and presented to the service of citizens. One of the most important features of this work is the development
of a platform-independent web-based application.
In the future, this service is planned to be offered in the mobile environment (Android), and work is continuing in this
direction. On the other hand, it is aimed to enrich the existing system with different works such as estimates of the present
and future of the past years, creation of disaster scenarios and planning of collective burial areas. It is also thought to
place kiosks within the cemetery.

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Acknowledgement

This work was performed by coordination and consultancy of Division of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing,
Department of Geomatics Engineering of Cumhuriyet University together with Sivas Municipality and Universal
Information Technology.

References

Kocaman S, (2012),

Morova N, (2006) Lisans Tezi,

V, (1999), CBS

, (2006), CBS

(2017), http://mebis.ankara.bel.tr/ , [Accessed 20 May 2017].

http://cbs.izmir.bel.tr/CbsUygulamalar/MezarlikBilgiSistemi/,
[Accessed 20 May 2017].

Denizli http://mezarlik.denizli.bel.tr/, [Accessed 20 May 2017].

http://konmeb.konya.bel.tr/main.aspx, [Accessed 20 May 2017].

http://mbs.bursa.bel.tr/SearchKiosk.aspx, [Accessed 20 May 2017].

http://www.eskisehir.bel.tr/e_belediye_mezarlik.php?menu_id=33,
[Accessed 20 May 2017].

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