Relational and conceptual models to study the Mediterranean defensive networks: an experimental open database for content management systems

The Information Technology as a powerful tool for the analytical study of coastal defense structures of the Mediterranean: a proposal for an open database inspired to the relational and conceptual models. Study the defensive systems in every aspects means to resort to multidisciplinary analysis. The creation of a collector that gathers information of different contributions helps in understanding aspects not immediately perceptible. Adding new correlations between seemingly unconnected elements with the help of information on the history, chronology of events, construction data, interaction with the territories and populations regarding to the power and economic systems from which they depended, helps in the global vision of the defensive systems and their subsystems. The study and implementation of an integrated database covering all this information and that could generate contextual views based on the needs of study and analysis, it can be used to get information and increase the effectiveness of the research on defensive systems to be integrated both on current and future projects that deal with the same themes. Once populated the database with different contributions, it could be integrated furthermore with useful information coming from other different sources and embedded into several open CMS (Content Management Systems), GIS (Geographical Information Systems) or VE (Visual Environments) regarding the same argument, not to study the monument �in itself�, but inserted within a system of relations and thematic aggregations that can promote further conceptual ones.