The Data Base (the Program)

The information program or the database was developed in several stages and was adapted to meet the project needs and handle new additional information. We also used new technologies to achieve the maximum benefit from the program, in designated tasks, such as extracting reports and information that would benefit various parties including municipal and village councils, researchers, planners, legal personnel, investors, and others.

At the beginning of the project, a database was designed to store the data of the first questionnaires. Following that, the information program was adapted to store the information derived from all versions of the questionnaire, the special program designed for the Cultural Resources Project, and the information programs designed for the old city of Hebron and the old city of Jerusalem. The current program can take architectural information from a variety of sources and allows for analysis and the creation of an unlimited number of reports. The new database makes it possible to link specified provisions in the questionnaire and to generate different kinds of reports. The program also gives certain results on some provisions in the questionnaires, which we identified for their comprehensiveness and importance, and because the information in them is related in various questionnaires.

The program makes it possible to unify the terms used, change them, and check information automatically, thereby facilitating later updating.  The program is also designed in such a way that makes it easy to link the information to the Geographic Information System, making it possible to extract an unlimited number of maps in accordance with the kind of information in the questionnaire by only giving the numbers of buildings which will then be identified on the maps.

The differences in information obtained across different used questionnaires and the different provisions inevitably had an impact on the information that appears in our reports. The reports were designed using the most recent questionnaire, which included provisions that did not exist in previous questionnaires. When reading the reports, keep in mind that the information solicited differed depending on when it was gathered and who gathered it. We have to look for the common denominators across all questionnaires in order to compile a comprehensive report with the correct rates. This is indeed what we did when selecting the reports for publication. (However, it is still possible to request a specific report for a specific location that was generated by a specific version of the questionnaire.).