The Role of Modeling and Synthesis in Creative Mitigation

Abstract

In the 54 years since passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, more than 56 million ha of land have been surveyed in the United States, and nearly one million cultural resources have been identified and recorded. These efforts have produced hundreds of thousands of project reports, vast collections of data, and a wealth of descriptive information about the past. The accumulated data can be used to generate important new knowledge about the past, with many scientific and management implications, but remain largely untapped. Following current approaches, many resources will be damaged or lost before effective strategies for studying or preserving them can be developed. Synthesis and modeling are needed in creative mitigation efforts to identify which resources to preserve and study and how best to do so with limited time and funding. This article explores the potential for compiling and synthesizing large cultural and environmental datasets within a geographic information system to model the nature and distribution of cultural resources. It is argued that dedicated synthesis and modeling of cultural resource management data will allow development of more effective and proactive research and management strategies, providing lasting benefit to diverse scientific and traditional communities and the public.

Will It Ever Be FAIR?

“…and summary information on the archaeological contexts they are responsible for managing. Data reuse, therefore, can lead to improvements to client programmatic agreements related to creative or alternative mitigation efforts (e.g., community archaeology projects, predictive modeling, designation of traditional cultural properties, enhancement of online tools), which are increasingly sought by many regulatory agencies and tribes (Douglas and Manney 2020; Heilen 2020; Schlanger et al 2020; Sebastian 2020; Wollwage et al 2020). Making compliance archaeology data FAIR + CARE under thoughtful programmatic agreements can potentially yield more information about a particular region if research can be done by interoperating existing, disparate datasets.…”

The National Cultural Resources Information Management System (NCRIMS)

“…The underlying CHRSM tool is an implementation of sensitivity analysis, which is informed by many years of modeling across the West (see Barker 2009;Hall and Ingbar 2014;Hall et al 2013Hall et al , 2015Heilen 2020;Ingbar and Halford 2008;Ingbar and Wriston 2017;Sebastian et al 2005Sebastian et al , 2016Thomas 1972;Wescott et al 2016;Zeanah et al 2004). The sensitivity values for the WebApp are based on two common variables-Distance-to-Water and Slopethat are statistically correlated to resource locations.…”

Creative Mitigation: Alternative Strategies for Resources, Stakeholders, and the Public

“…Michael Heilen (2020) next studies the role of modeling in historic preservation and creative mitigation. In the roughly 50 years since the passage of the NHPA, he notes that over 56 million hectares of land have been surveyed in the United States, and nearly one million heritage resources have been identified and recorded.…”