New Digital Service – Online Search for Grave Sites Now Available on Mobile Devices.
The cemetery administration of the Technical Services Offenburg is providing its visitors with a new digital service: the convenient online search for grave sites. Thanks to an innovative collaboration with PBSGEO GmbH from Cologne, users can now quickly and easily locate the desired grave sites using their smartphones.
Instead of laboriously searching through the many graves, the new platform offers a virtual tour of all 13 cemeteries in Offenburg. After selecting the desired cemetery, the screen displays an overview of the entire facility. The search for a specific grave site is done by entering the family name. The platform then displays all individuals with this surname buried in the selected cemetery. Selecting a name from the list will display the grave site on the overview map.
Visitors on-site at the cemetery can use their smartphones to retrieve their location via GPS signal to better orient themselves. The color-coded markings on the map indicate which grave is occupied (red), available (green), or already leveled (gray).
Privacy Guaranteed: Hans-Jürgen Jäger, head of the cemetery department, emphasizes that privacy is ensured with the digital grave information. After all, the names of the deceased are also on the tombstones, which anyone can freely read. If necessary, graves can be anonymized. The digital cemetery map not only significantly facilitates the work of citizens and cemetery administration but also communication with professionals working in the cemeteries, such as funeral homes, stonemasons, or nurseries.
The tedious manual entry of graves on large paper plans is a thing of the past. Changes such as leveling old graves or creating new ones used to have to be crossed out, corrected, or manually entered on the plans. Now, changes can be made easily and quickly with a simple click.
Additionally, the program provides valuable information about upcoming changes to the grave sites, allowing for early planning.
QR Codes: To facilitate the use of the digital cemetery map on-site, signs with QR codes will soon be placed. This will allow visitors to easily scan with their smartphones and start their virtual tour.
The digital cemetery map can be accessed through the Technical Services Offenburg website at www.tbo-offenburg.de.
Source: Regio Trends, April 18, 2024, https://www.regiotrends.de/de/aus-vereinen-gruppen/index.news.523888.virtueller-friedhofsrundgang-in-offenburg—neuer-digitaler-service—online-suche-nach-grabstaetten-mit-mobilem-endgeraet-jetzt-moeglich.html
