Modern science is going through a period of important reflection on the role of different agents and multiple disciplines in the management and safeguarding of architectural heritage. This new focus generates a greater amount and diversity of information, so the implementation of a unifying tool in the framework of digital information models would mean a better knowledge of cultural heritage as well as aiding its safeguarding and protection. In addition, it must be taken into account that, for the correct management of information in its broadest dimension, this tool must make it possible to relate alphanumeric data about an item of heritage to its spatial location. In this sense, this article proposes a Heritage Information System (HIS)—understood as a digital knowledge tool—that consists of a relational database and a map manager with Geographic Information System (GIS) technology (a geodatabase). The methodology suggested here sets out the steps that make up the HIS, so that the system can be applied to other geographical elements or realities. For this reason, a study was made of “La Cultura del Agua” in Valverde de Burguillos (Spain), a heritage ensemble that consists of rural architecture and dispersed preindustrial elements, which are currently at risk. The HIS seeks to develop a more complete identification of these elements (individually and as a system) and a justified argument for their being given value and great visibility. This new approach encourages sustainable development in terms of efficiency and effectiveness for the analysis, diagnosis, and reactivation of cultural heritage, always placing importance on the balance of social participation with the territory in which the system is applied, and with global society.

The pace at which cities grow and its impact on heritage management has meant that those heritage assets not linked to the traditionally monumental have been directly doomed to oblivion. The purpose of this article is to present a research methodology backed up by multidisciplinarity and stakeholders’ diversity that allows us to highlight the values and singular aspects of this rural heritage. To achieve this, a methodology was devised that is divided into three phases: mapping of human, cultural, and natural resources based on studies undertaken by the Public Sector Administration, experts, and the citizens themselves. The second phase involved the establishment of what to protect amongst all the stakeholders involved. Finally, the third stage entails integration of the information within an urban development framework. In order to work on the development of a diagnosis from three highly different approaches, Geographic Information Systems was used as information management tools, as a means of contrasting it and performing a comprehensive analysis of the same. The development of such a holistic approach provided a patrimonial map of essential resources in the municipality to be taken into account to shape sustainable development strategies inherent to a rural environment of low density. The lack of this comprehensive approach when managing rural heritage in which citizens take on centre stage in decision-making processes unearths two fundamental issues: firstly, the ascertainment of the existence of cultural heritage hitherto abandoned, alongside the need to endow urban governance powers to the public administration, as it falls to them to spearhead this shift in public management.