A web based information system for the inspection of the hydraulic works in Ancient Greece

The ancient civilizations that had prospered on the Greek territory since 3000 BC had a great contribution to philosophy, politics, physical sciences and arts. Several technical works were constructed during that period to support the infrastructure needs of those spiritually developed societies. Particularly, the hydraulic works were very important, because of the: (a) advanced technologies that had been used, (b) high standards of life that served and (c) sustainable water management practices that the designers adopted. These works supported the water supply, the drainage of the lands and the cities, the flood protection, the sanitary facilities and sometimes the use of water for recreational purposes. Several simple (cisterns, wells, aqueducts) or more advanced (dams, tunnels, siphons) hydraulic structures have been found, spread all over the wider Ancient Greek territory. Their presence reveals that ancient Greeks wisely resolved several problems concerning water that modern societies still have to face up. In this study, a web based application is presented, for the inspection of available information about the hydraulics works in Ancient Greece. The application includes the necessary informatics tools to manipulate and analyze the various information types and make the information available on the internet. Information includes technical characteristics of the structures, drawings, maps, texts, papers, studies, photos, videos etc. The main purposes of the application are the easy access to available information and the facilitation of its analysis. The latter can be achieved by using a Database and a Geographical Information System, to perform queries or to make maps.