Locating Graves is Now a Mouse-click Away

Author: John Forne
Date: 9 February 2010 - 1 Comments

Categories: Sharing Data, Using Data, Public Sector

Tags: , , ,

The Rotorua District Council has launched a new online service that allows people to search by name for an individual cemetery or crematorium record, with results including the exact location of burial.

So far, the council has loaded more than 32,000 individual records from the five public cemeteries it administers (Rotorua, Kauae, Reporoa, Mamaku and Ngakuru), with some records dating as far back as 1882.

Over recent years, council staff have been systematically photographing all headstones in the council's cemeteries and plotting the location of each grave using GPS. Typical search results on the website will reveal a photo of the headstone, the grave's exact location, a map, full name of the deceased, age, and other associated information.

Before going live, the new service was tested by more than 600 active genealogists and other regular users of cemetery records in New Zealand and overseas.

The council's corporate services director, Jean-Paul Gaston said he expected many people to find the new service a valuable enhancement of the council's website. He pointed out that on a national basis, cemetery records on council websites were consistently amongst the most accessed sections of online information.

Not all records are available through the website yet, although the remainder are expected to be completed over the next year. The council also plans to talk to Ngati Whakaue about the inclusion of photographs for graves located within Kauae Cemetery as these are yet to be included online.

This website demonstrates how geospatial information can have multi and varied uses and contributions to society. Putting information like this in a publicly accessible form, such as online, can lead to even further uses yet to be identified. Lets see where this takes us!

See the council's website to view the cemetery and crematorium records.

What do you think of this service? Would you use it? Or how might you develop it further? Let us know what you think...

John Forne

Analyst
New Zeland Geospatial Office


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Comments

  • Well done Rotorua, this is a big task for any Council to undertake. It is also good to see more GIS/Mapping integration within Council websites. We have spent a bit of time over the last few months building dynamic mapping into our Councils website. We have found that both residents and visitors are using the maps (and spatial queries built into the site) to solve all kinds of problems from finding out their rubbish collection days, the dog pound, walkways, and the list goes on... Again, well done Rotorua.. :)

    Posted by Ian Tidy, 11/02/2010 11:20am (7 months ago)

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