The Photo Database for Integrated Area Studies (PDIAS) is a web-based system composed of a geo-referenced database and its interface for fi eld photographs taken by researchers in Asian and African area studies. It works as a platform for collecting resources from researchers and providing them to PDIAS users. The collected data now number more than 700 items, and the number of unique accesses through the Internet averages 19.97 per day over the most recent 180 days, which is twice as high as that of the fi rst 180 days. PDIAS shows the maps of Asian and African regions on which clickable points linked to each fi eld photograph are plotted. Users can view fi eld photographs with associated information by clicking points over several reference maps such as topography, land cover and population. We are planning to provide an open source geo-referenced photograph viewer based on the PDIAS, which will help both researchers and network users to understand areas by accumulating a variety of sitespecifi c information.