The ISO certified ontology of the CIDOC CRM provides the concepts to model the complexity of cultural heritage and archaeological data in their semantic context. In respect to spatial data there is the challenge of the use and definition of spatial information within its concepts in order to use Geoinformation Systems to manage, visualize and analyze the data in its spatial context.

In the interdisciplinary project HiMAT (History of mining activities in the Tyrol) located at the university of Innsbruck the approach was taken to implement spatial and non spatial data in a relational database with CIDOC CRM as data model. Interfaces for data entry and visualization have been developed and used within the project.

Another approach for the integration of CIDOC CRM with the geoinformation world is a semantic refinement for CRM Places taking into account and relating to the standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortiums (OGC). This approach is currently under development at FORTH and has produced an extension to the CRM for spatial data that will be the main focus of this presentation.