Monitoring and Assessment Heritage Tool: Quantify and classify urban heritage buildings

Abstract

Urban areas and historical centres are exposed to climate change, decay, human threats, among other menaces, which jeopardize their safeguard. Besides, in general, stakeholders, or decision-makers, do not require interventions to be sustained by previous evaluations of their impact in the urban heritage. To fill this gap, the international organizations in charge of the protection of cultural heritage (e.g., UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICCROM), in line with what happens with the environment, request a holistic and integrated evaluations, regarding heritage impact assessment to maintain the urban heritage.The paper proposes a Monitoring and Assessment Heritage Tool (MAHT) to collect data concerning heritage, technical and social dimensions of urban heritage buildings. This tool aims to create shared databases, using a systematic assessment and monitoring to identify attributes and transformations, especially regarding physical features of urban fabrics and buildings, and the quality of life of citizens. It involves data analysis, supported by statistical procedures, which underline complementarity dimensions, and combined indicators, i.e., distinct levels of quantitative information. Finally, the paper concludes that, as a holistic assessment tool, MAHT contributes to catalogue buildings in cities, providing structured and systematised data, to support the decision-making processes of the different stakeholders at different urban heritage levels.