Abstract:

All geological and landscape resources have two opposing value sets: extractive and conservative activities [komoo l 2003]. In the conservative concept, a new paradigm earth physical resources is regarded as having value in the context of knowledge, history and culture. The geoconservation idea arose mainly from the need to protect heritage resources that were already recognized by the general public (or naturalists and geologists) in the context of preserving the landscape beauty for recreation or outstanding heritage value. The philosophy is embodied in the UNESCO’s World Natural Heritage Sites approach, which provides guidelines for identifying, and assessing natural world heritage sites that have outstanding universal value.  This project aims to provide an exclusive geodiversity information system that utilized a new digital object model, namely Networked Digital Object (NDO). This model allows a sharing environment with a knowledge discovery through relating varied and specific DOs among the geodiversity components to produce a new NDO, which represent new information. Together with the input from Langkawi Geopark components and knowledge, GRS can be customized into Langkawi Geopark GRS (LGGRS). With this establishment, further research on geological data and expertise and other DO services can be incorporated into the repository. Finally, GRS can be generalized to offe geodiversity knowledge for other places. Bringing GRS technology closer to knowledge based, knowledge management and data mining several models can be proposed for both commercial products and research prototypes.