Digital Archive of Valuable Historical and Cultural Heritage of ASEAN! A Global Project Helps to Foster a Sense of Unity in the Region

10 June 2020 -

The ASEAN Secretariat (Jakarta, Indonesia) is promoting the “ASEAN Cultural Heritage Digital Archive (ACHDA)” project, which aims at preserving and passing on ASEAN’s cultural heritage by digitizing and archiving them on an online archive site for public access.

Asahi Hasebe, who is the person in charge for sales said, “we thought NTTDATA’s digital archiving solution “AMLAD” can be applied to contribute to cultivating a sense of unity among the ASEAN Member States (AMS). We discussed with the ASEAN Secretariat through the Mission of Japan to ASEAN and were able to gain understanding of its significance. Under such circumstances, it was decided that this project would be implemented by the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF) contributed by the Government of Japan.”

The project was approved and started in June 2018. Out of the 10 AMS, it was discussed which country’s cultural heritage should be digitized in the first phase, and NTTDATA continued to negotiate with the ASEAN Secretariat and the relevant cultural ministries of each country. As a result, it was decided to be Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.

Previously, the “AMLAD” project supported only image, audio and movie data such as documents and paintings. In addition to these heritage, ACHDA introduced a new trial, the digitalization of three-dimensional shaped objects such as Buddha statues and jewelry.

Kenichi Kawashima, Project Manager of ACHDA, felt the awe of dealing with the important cultural heritage, while acquiring data without contacting the object, the work was carried out with the utmost care in choosing the method that has the least impact on the heritage itself.

“Even though it was hard work, the staff in each country cooperated with tremendous amount of passion. Their zeal helped us out time and time again,” says Hasebe and Kawashima.

Digitization itself was completed at the end of 2019. Even after the new year, preparations for the release of ACHDA website continued until the ACHDA site was successfully released on 27 February 2020. Phases 2 and 3 are planned for the remaining 7 AMSs.