Background / Historic / Current
Figure 1:
Sakia - Search the World IRRIGATION Index as of 22 February 1999
Figure 2:
Sakia - Start page as of 22 September 2015
Figure 3:
Sakia.org - Sitemap as of 12 June 2007
Historic links and information
Services at the University of Kassel
Sakia.org was established in 1997 at the Department of Rural Engineering and Natural Resource Protection at the University of Kassel, Germany. The department was headed by Prof. Dr Peter Wolff.
Sakia.org comprised a loosely coupled set of technical services in the broader area of land and water, including irrigation, hydrology, Kulturtechnik, and agro-climatic data. Some services, such as IRRIGATION-L, date back to 1994. IRRIGATION-L was established with technical support and cooperation from the DFN (Deutsches Forschungsnetz), the German National Research and Education Network, which generously provided the infrastructure by maintaining the list server.
One of the key objectives was to provide services and freely accessible knowledge to students as well as the wider technical community.
An early version of the Sakia service at the University of Kassel is shown in Figure 1.
Dedicated Sakia.org server and services
Following university restructuring and the retirement of Prof. Dr Peter Wolff - which led to the closure of the department - a new solution was required to continue the services.
As site usage and public demand remained strong, a decision was made to modernise and reestablish Sakia.org, potentially outside the university framework. As an interim measure, services continued to be physically hosted at the university under the umbrella of a neighbouring department.
Preparations began in 2001, and a dedicated Sakia.org service running on a standalone server was launched in early 2003.
This second iteration of Sakia.org consisted of multiple websites and services managed jointly under the Sakia.org umbrella. Four core services were accessible directly via their own domains, and three via service-specific subdomains.
While the site underwent continuous development, the core components remained:
- Sakia.org
- IRRIGATION-L
- Virtual Library Irrigation
- IRRISOFT
- Sakia.org e-Publish
- e-Journal of Land and Water
- Journal of Applied Irrigation Science
- Sakia.org News
Content volume and activity peaked in 2015. (Figure 2 and 3).
Server failure and financial constraints
Following a server failure in late 2015, the entire site had to be taken offline. Although a skeleton site was established in 2016, the services could not be restored to their former scope.
The primary reasons were financial rather than technical, compounded by severe time constraints. Despite sustained demand and steady growth prior to the collapse, the lack of sufficient long-term funding had become critical well before the final failure.
Consequently, activities were progressively scaled back, and content generation and acquisition ultimately ceased altogether.
Some content remains accessible via archived captures in the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive. However, this archived material represents only a fraction of the original content published prior to the crash in October 2015. The original site architecture and navigation (including extensive use of frames) significantly hindered complete capture by Internet Archive crawlers.
The last largely complete (1) version (October 2015) is available at:
-
https://web.archive.org/web/20151108083346/http://www.sakia.org/cms/index.php
(1) Note: The original site structure limited comprehensive archival capture by automated crawlers.
Development of the new site
Development of the new site – July 2023 to March 2026
Starting in July 2023, some technical investigations were undertaken to evaluate various systems and hosting options for their suitability for hosting Sakia.org and its related sites in the future. Subsequently, work on the new system commenced, with modifications and adaptations made to best suit Sakia.org requirements. One of the key objectives was the implementation of a resilient system that would provide secure and long-term access to the content.
In March 2026, the new Sakia.org site was finally launched. While still limited in content, it already provided the structure and a sound basis for the addition of relevant historic content as well as possible new content.
Sakia.org update release in 2026 and the re-establishing of various sections
Figure 4:
Sakia.org navigation - Colour-coded navigation and content section indicating the respective service including a description or the domain name e.g. VL-IRRIGATION.ORG in this example.
An extended Sakia.org update was released, re-establishing various sections of the former sites and services, centred on the historic content of the Virtual Library Irrigation and Hydrology, the e-Journal of Land and Water (eJLW) and the Sakia.org e-publish section. Content was revised and moderately expanded, with some technical updates and additions.
During the update process, some restructuring was undertaken, unifying the various Sakia.org-related services and projects under the main Sakia.org umbrella. This brings the structure closer to the original organisational structure of the Sakia.org sites as they existed up to 2015. All services will remain accessible through their dedicated domains, such as vl-irrigation.org; however, these domains will point directly to specific subsections within the Sakia.org domain, with the content hosted under sakia.org.
As an aid to navigation, colour-coding was introduced for some sections and their related navigation panes. As shown in Figure 4, distinct colours are used in the navigation pane (left) to identify the different services. The same colours are used for vertical sidebars on the right-hand side of the respective pages, displaying the associated internet domains.
The main additions to the current site are the following sections indicating the colour-coding used:
- Virtual Library Irrigation and Hydrology
- Sakia.org e-publish
- e-Journal of Land and Water (eJLW)
- IRRISOFT
- eNews
Sakia.org content structure
A more detailed overview is provided in the sitemap below.