Time and space as two basic attributes of Buddhist monuments: An introduction to the design, implementation, and application of the data platform of Buddhist monuments in China

Abstract

The Data Platform of Buddhist Monuments in Time and Space (buddhist.wiki) is a research infrastructure that focuses on collecting and presenting related materials of Buddhist monuments, which are presented by Geo map and complete archive from five aspects: overview, architecture, history, art, and personage. Time and space are extracted as two basic attributes and applied as design dimensions to organize the order of huge amounts of graphic and text data, which provide systematic convenience for the collection, presentation, search, and research for the data platform. After a preliminary introduction to the importance of Buddhist monuments, data characteristics, and construction purposes of the data platform, this article introduces its design, implementation, and application from three aspects: first, the graphic and text data source characteristics related to Buddhist monuments are investigated to analyse how time and space (data attributes) are used as design dimensions to achieve high-degree data collection and presentation integration; secondly, data platform implementation is introduced in detail, including data acquisition, data storage design, and system design; finally, Tiantong Si is taken as an example to specifically introduce how time and space affect data platform design methods and participate in specific applications.