Abstract
Cultural Heritage (CH) is recognised as being of historical, social, and anthropological value and is considered as an enabler of sustainable development. As a result, it is included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 and 8. SDG 11.4 emphasises the protection and safeguarding of heritage, and SDG 8.9 aims to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products. This paper briefly reviews the geoinformatics technologies of photogrammetry, remote sensing, and spatial information science and their application to CH. Detailed aspects of CH-related SDGs, comprising protection and safeguarding, as well as the promotion of sustainable tourism are outlined. Contributions of geoinformatics technologies to each of these aspects are then identified and analysed. Case studies in both developing and developed countries, supported by funding directed at the UN SDGs, are presented to illustrate the challenges and opportunities of geoinformatics to enhance CH protection and to promote sustainable tourism. The potential and impact of geoinformatics for the measurement of official SDG indicators, as well as UNESCO’s Culture for Development Indicators, are discussed. Based on analysis of the review and the presented case studies, it is concluded that the contribution of geoinformatics to the achievement of CH SDGs is necessary, significant and evident. Moreover, following the UNESCO initiative to introduce CH into the sustainable development agenda and related ICOMOS action plan, the concept of Sustainable Cultural Heritage is defined, reflecting the significance of CH to the United Nations’ ambition to “transform our world”.
Highlights
This paper primarily addresses the significant role of geoinformatics in cultural heritage (CH), even though it has been intensively used for environmental and natural heritage conservation and management
CH has been introduced into the sustainable development agenda (UNESCO, 2013a), and is directly referenced in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 8.9 and 11.4
Echoing the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) action plan ‘Cultural heritage and localizing the SDGs’ (Yıldırım, 2017), we define the concept of Sustainable Cultural Heritage as the protection, safeguarding and promotion of the tangible and intangible in a manner that does not diminish the socio-economic-environmental processes necessary to maintain human equity, diversity, and prosperity
Summary
In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to transform our world by 2030 (United Nations, 2015). Climate change aspects, including atmospheric moisture variation, temperature increase, sea level rise, wind, desertification, and pollution, together with biological and geological factors are having physical, social and cultural impacts on CH (Sabbioni et al, 2009; Cassar and Pender, 2005; Hall et al, 2016; Brimblecombe, 2014) Heritage sites, in both urban and natural environments, suffer from human conflicts, development, deterioration, environmental impacts, tourist exploitation and mismanagement. The combination of ground-based geoinformatics technologies will satisfy small-tomedium scale heritage documentation and monitoring, for large-scale archaeological site this can be labour intensive and time consuming, especially for sites that are unsuitable for in-situ surveying, such as areas of conflict In such environments, spaceborne or airborne remote sensing provides an ideal alternative. This section introduces the different aspects of CH safeguarding, for example, measurement, documentation, modelling and monitoring, and discusses the role of geoinformatics technologies in each of these aspects
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