Towards a Mexican National Archaeological Atlas Scalable 3D Web GIS and Archival Systems for Big Data

Abstract. The Tren Maya project, a new railway connecting major population centres and tourist sites around Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, impacted vast tracts of undeveloped land, ripe with archaeologically significant sites and landscapes. This effort necessitated the mobilization of Mexico’s archaeological authorities for the evaluation of large areas with tight timelines, as well as the creation of new museums along this railway network, consolidating and cataloguing previously scattered artifact collections. Authorities invested heavily in 3D survey products to meet the rigorous requirements of the project, resulting in the creation of many 3D aerial and terrestrial LiDAR, photogrammetry, structured light datasets. These survey data offer critical insight into their subjects and have wide potential for re-use by external parties, and are of great interest to the public at large, but, their inherent complexity and density create significant barriers for accessibility. We present a scalable and future-facing web-based system and archival framework enabling the long-term accessibility, visualization, and interoperability of critical 3D data assets with existing research and site management pipelines, game/xr/metaverse environments, and machine learning training applications.