Abstract
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.
Highlights
The technological change of recent decades means a renewal of access to culture and the way in which the collective memory of cultural events is managed
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
It is not be enough to just consider the historic value of the building, but all those values inherent in the cultural fabric in which it is contained [4,5,6]. These technological advances have benefitted the digital information models used in the heritage field, and these have grown in strength due to the growing availability of information in recent years to international administrations that support digital knowledge and the opening up of management processes of cultural heritage properties for the integration of knowledge [7,8]
Summary
The technological change of recent decades means a renewal of access to culture and the way in which the collective memory of cultural events is managed. In the digital era, where closed and sector-defined knowledge should have been superseded, the majority of initiatives developed for the management of information about items of heritage take place within the framework of isolated disciplines and scarcely related elements They are not updated, which leads to stagnant and fixed information. From the point of view of the effectiveness and sustainability of these integrated information systems over time in the field of heritage, the panorama is, on one hand, confused by the diversity of procedures employed [9] These frequently lack the necessary methodological reflection and alignment with the objectives of a true global cultural management project [10,11], so fail to generate or disseminate real knowledge. The situation is doubtful concerning the usefulness of this information for activating genuine safeguarding initiatives, losing all possibility of benefiting cultural heritage [12,13,14]
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