The Implication of Smart Environment on Old Palembang Cultural Heritage Places

Abstract

Palembang as old city has many historical places in various conditions. Some of these places are still easy to be found, well maintained, abandoned as well as leaved as named without any physical evidences. The cultural heritage deals with modern live and the threat of extinction. In the internet era, the term smart environment for cultural heritage becomes another approach to conserve the historical artefacts. However, the conservation should also consider the non-physical aspect such as the relationship between people and the environment in the heritage place. This paper elaborate the use of people place relationship in determining the smart implication at the at Palembang cultural heritage area. To achieve this aim, study have two objectives; (1) examining how people of historical places attached to their living environment as well as their city, (2) determining the level of potency of historical places to find the appropriate smart strategy for conservation. Place attachment was measured through questionnaires filled by the 136 residents from seven old urban kampongs in Palembang. Then, results from this were confirmed by respondents understanding on the history of place and their visiting experience to determine the potency of historical places. Those statistical analyses used PASW v.19. The result shows three groups of heritage places at Palembang cultural heritage area; the ones with high, medium and low attachment in urban scale. The smart strategy can be applied at medium and low attachment to rebirth and strengthen the attachment to the places. The use of virtual reality on these places is the appropriate strategy for smart heritage conservation. The combination between Virtual Reality and multimedia technologies will support the development at historical places of Palembang.