Locating Graves Made Easy By Putting Digital Wayfinding Kiosks In A Norwegian Cemetery
February 8, 2022 by Dave Haynes
Hat Tip to Peter Ødemark for pointing me to this …
There will be people who will utter the old “Now I’ve seen everything” phrase when they read about a Norwegian cemetery using interactive digital wayfinding screens, but I think it is clever way to address a tangible and very familiar problem.
A Norwegian firm located just outside Oslo – Procon Digital – has developed and started marketing what it calls a complete digital information solution for burial groves. The company has developed the software and done the integration work for outdoor-ready touchscreen display totems that allow visitors and relatives to access information on demand, right on site.
The obvious application is enabling people visiting a graveyard for the first time – or perhaps the first time in a while – to locate headstones or other markers by entering the name of the grave they wish to visit. The on-screen UX kicks back a map that shows where the grave is and how to get there.
The platform continuously retrieves information about people have passed and been buried a graves registration administration system. As this is updated with new burials, this information is retrieved automatically.
Says Procon:
With simple keystrokes, care of the grave, creation of gravestones, etc. is also ordered. In addition, Procon Digital KirkeVert with GravplassInfo offers the opportunity for an obituary of, for example, famous personalities who are buried.
Procon Digital GravplassInfo can cover 85% of Norwegian burial groves, and is a cloud solution developed by Procon Digital AS.
The development of Procon Digital KirkeVert has been ongoing since the idea base was conceived in 2013, and the solution has now been in operation in front of Skedsmo church since December 2021.
This just makes a bunch of sense from a visitor experience perspective. The business model side is a little shakier, just because while there is a steady supply of new burials, there aren’t that many cemeteries in a typical city, and among those, probably not that many that would make the investment. But Procon is primarily focused on self-service digital kiosks, so this would be among a range of solutions and not the sole focus.
That stated, I know precious little about that business. Maybe it exists, but this would seem a really good application for some of the military cemeteries over in France and Belgium honoring and locating fallen soldiers from both world wars.
This is very interesting, even though it’s seemingly quite niche I think these types of projects will become more common. One of our integration partners in Slovakia did a similar project using our outdoor touch screens a few years back:
https://www.bratislavskenoviny.sk/aktuality/vrakuna/62552-foto-na-dvoch-najvacsich-bratislavskych-cintorinoch-pribudli-dotykove-informacne-panely?fbclid=IwAR0Rp7KvD37p3srtgXy-xmVaSPs2PXHPuFDQeU7cynqQ0FnxCdR6m7vqdwM