Guest editorial

Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development

ISSN: 2044-1266

Article publication date: 15 August 2016

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Citation

Quintero, D.M.a.M.S. (2016), "Guest editorial", Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHMSD-08-2016-074

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Volume 6, Issue 2.

CIPA's mission in documenting cultural heritage resources for posterity

CIPA, originally known as the International Committee on Architectural Photogrammetry, was founded in 1968 jointly by International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). The original intent of CIPA was to facilitate the transfer of technology from the measurement sciences into the heritage documentation and recording disciplines.

At present CIPA has a membership of experts from over 45 countries and various disciplines. CIPA has organized more than 25 bi-annual international symposia and workshops around the world with the endorsement of UNESCO, the Getty Conservation (GC) Institute, World Monument Funds and many other important organizations worldwide, gathering thousands of experts and researchers. After nearly half a century since its founding, CIPA has evolved to become the ICOMOS International Heritage Documentation Scientific Committee.

CIPA's mission is to encourage the development of principles and practices for the recording, documentation and information management for all aspects of cultural heritage; and to support and encourage the development of specialized tools and techniques in support of these activities. The rapid rise of new digital technologies in the past years has revolutionized the practice of documenting, managing and disseminating knowledge of cultural heritage resources.

Selected papers

CIPA has joined forces with the GC Institute to contribute this special issue on heritage inventories, which we identified as an essential area of heritage recording and documentation that merits greater attention than it has received in recent years. Most of the papers included were selected from contributors to digital heritage inventories sessions of the 2013 and 2015 CIPA symposia, which were both Chaired by my Co-editor David Myers of the GCI. Each of these papers has been updated and revised for this issue. Authors' affiliations are primarily with government agencies and academic institutions.

The papers presented here are aimed at providing emerging innovative and focused uses of digital information management approaches for the benefit of protecting these important resources. Our aim is for this issue to offer an opportunity for educators, professionals, heritage institutions and managers of heritage places to learn more from the experiences of others when embarking on efforts to establish or maintain heritage inventories.

The first paper aims to identify key elements of heritage inventory programs that are essential for them to be effective instruments for heritage conservation and management (Myers, 2016). It is primarily focused on the inventory programs of governmental institutions, which typically have ultimate responsibility for heritage protection within their jurisdictions. It seeks to encourage discussion among heritage professionals about increasing the effectiveness of inventory programs.

The second paper describes the evolution of the national inventories of Scotland and Wales, describing in some detail their current setup (McKeague and Thomas, 2016). The national government agencies responsible for inventories in the two nations, Historic Environment Scotland and the Royal Commission for the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Wales, share an integrated data system through the Shared Web Information Systems for Heritage partnership, which has offered both organizations a number of benefits.

The third paper reviews the evolution of England's national heritage inventory (Carlisle and Lee, 2016). It focuses on the current Heritage Information Access Strategy, led by England's national heritage agency Historic England, for a future vision of networked, digital heritage inventories to support heritage protection in England.

The fourth paper describes the South African Heritage Resources Information System (SAHRIS), the national inventory of heritage sites and objects developed and managed by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (Smuts et al., 2016). The paper explains how SAHRIS facilitates web-based applications for heritage approval and permits for research and development, and serves as a tool for reporting heritage crimes and tracking related cases.

The fifth paper reviews the evolution of the inventory of the Flanders region of Belgium, managed by the Flanders Heritage Agency (Van Daele et al., 2016). This paper highlights the interaction between digital inventory systems and their users, reflecting on both how systems have been shaped by user needs and how the practice of heritage recording has been shaped by information systems.

The sixth paper describes the creation of an inventory of the historic city of Ahmadabad, located in the state of Gujarat in western India (Shah, 2016). It presents the varied approaches and challenges encountered in documenting more than 6,000 resources over an area of 543 hectares. These efforts were undertaken to a large extent as part of the preparation of a World Heritage nomination dossier.

The seventh paper describes the creation of a digital inventory for the archaeological sites of Bat, Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn, Oman, a World Heritage Site known as the most complete collections of settlements and necropolises from the 3rd millennium BC in the world (Kondo et al., 2016). Developed to address the needs of Oman's Ministry of Heritage and Culture, the Bat Digital Heritage Inventory is designed to manage and share archaeological information and for cultural resource management purposes.

This issue concludes with an eighth paper describing the Arches Heritage Inventory and Management System, an open source software platform developed jointly by the GC Institute and World Monuments Fund that is purpose-built to address the inventory needs of cultural heritage organizations internationally (Myers et al., 2016). Arches was presented at workshops at both the 2013 and 2015 CIPA symposia. The paper covers the design and functionality of the Arches platform, and describes a range of implementations of Arches to date.

David Myers

Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, California, USA, and

Mario Santana Quintero

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

References

Carlisle, P. and Lee, E. (2016), “Recording the past: heritage inventories in England”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 128-137

Kondo, Y., Miki, T., Kuronuma, T., Hayakawa, Y.S., Kataoka, K. and Oguchi, T. (2016), “Concurrent and sustainable development of a local-scale digital heritage inventory through action research at Bat, Oman”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 195-212

McKeague, P. and Thomas, D. (2016), “Evolution of national heritage inventories for Scotland and Wales”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 113-127

Myers, D. (2016), “Heritage inventories: promoting effectiveness as a vital tool for sustainable heritage management”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 102-112

Myers, D., Dalgity, A. and Avramides, I. (2016), “The Arches heritage inventory and management system: a platform for the heritage field”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 213-224

Shah, K. (2016), “Creation of cultural heritage inventories: case of the historic city of Ahmadabad”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 166-194

Smuts, K., Mlungwana, N. and Wiltshire, N. (2016), “SAHRIS: South Africa's integrated, web-based heritage management system”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 138-152

Van Daele, K., Meganck, L. and Mortier, S. (2016), “On data-driven systems and system-driven data: twenty years of the Flanders heritage inventory”, Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 153-165

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