Spatially Enabled Web Application for Urban Cultural Heritage Monitoring and Metrics Reporting for the SDGs

Abstract

UNESCO and the United Nations have recently identified cultural heritage (CH) as a key enabler of sustainability by incorporating it into several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Accurate and efficient reporting on CH is considered fundamental despite known limitations due to the lack of sufficient and harmonized data. This paper presents a spatially enabled web application for urban CH monitoring for the city of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece. The objective was to integrate the information provided by several independent public registries on CH into a common 2D mapping and reporting platform and to enrich it with additional data provided by other built environment agencies. An estimation of the expected cost for the structural evaluation by experts of the city’s CH assets was also implemented for SDG’s Indicator 11.4.1. The methodology involved stakeholder identification, data collection and pre-processing, field verification and documentation, calculation of Indicator 11.4.1, and the actual coding process. The application can be found online, providing useful insights and statistical information on the city’s heritage in a dashboard format. The key challenges included the lack of updated data, the existence of several individual registries, and the need for regular field inspection due to the rapidly changing urban fabric.

Maps and SDG11: A Complex but Possible Relationship

“…The query was initiated according to the formulation "monitoring SDG" OR "localizing SDG" AND "GIS" OR "geographic information systems" AND "sustainable development goal", in a time-frame 2015-2022, to consider the literature published after the 2030 Agenda formulation. The result of this phase brought the identification of 29 references, then evaluated according to their potential relevance for the research, leading to 7 references [30][31][32][33][34][35][36].…”

“…The availability of data, understood as inhomogeneity in terms of disaggregation levels [30][31][32][33][34][35]. The process of disaggregation at the urban scale is certainly useful for extracting essential information from the data.…”

“…The inhomogeneity of the databases implies great difficulties in cross-referencing multiple elements that are not immediately intelligible. The data contained in different databases are partial and do not allow for thorough investigation of complex phenomena such as those outlined by the SDGs [33,34,36]. In addition, existing databases used by PAs are often not open-access, making data access impossible and integration with real-time systems unreliable.…”

Developing a Virtual Open-Air Museum of Vernacular Architecture

“…One of the authors' reasons for creating such a system was the fact that cultural heritage around the world is under considerable risk from natural and anthropogenic threats. The creation of a web application for cultural heritage has also been addressed by Mantegari et al [5] and Chalkidou et al [6]. An important part of documenting cultural heritage is the creation of 3D models and their subsequent presentation.…”

Sustainability Assessment of Cultural Heritage in Shandong Province

“…SDG 11.4, which refers to "strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage", was put forward aiming to the protection and sustainable development of world heritage [5,18]. As the only extension of this goal, SDG 11.4.1 describes "total expenditure (public and private) per capita spent on the preservation, protection and conservation of all cultural and natural heritage, by type of heritage (cultural, natural, mixed and World Heritage Centre designation), level of government (national, regional and local/municipal), type of expenditure (operating expenditure/investment) and type of private funding (donations in kind, private non-profit sector and sponsorship)" [6,7,19]. This is the first time that world heritage protection has been formally put forward in the form of SDGs [19][20][21].…”