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The purpose of this paper is to describe the Arches heritage inventory and management system for the benefit of practitioners working with heritage inventories. Arches is a modern software platform purpose-built for the creation and management of inventories to support effective heritage place management. The system was developed as open source software jointly by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and World Monuments Fund (WMF).

The paper discusses the needs and challenges addressed by the GCI and WMF in developing Arches, explains the system’s design and functionality, reports on software releases and ongoing enhancements, describes current software implementations, and concludes by discussing the role and growth of the open source community and the Arches project’s aspirations.

The needs and challenges in the heritage field that the GCI and WMF originally identified have been confirmed through interactions between the Arches project and a range of practitioners. The suitability of Arches to address these needs is demonstrated through steady growth of the open source community and an increasing number of implementations of the Arches platform.

Arches provides a purpose-built system that is freely available and ready for use. It offers a system that requires a marginal investment by organizations compared to building digital inventories from scratch. The Arches project has created an international community of information technology and heritage practitioners to share experience, knowledge, and skills to address their common challenges in dealing with digital inventories.

The paper offers heritage practitioners details on a new tool for overcoming their challenges in building and managing digital heritage inventories.

The purpose of this paper is to identify key elements of what makes an inventory program effective for cultural heritage conservation and management. It is hoped that it will spur discussion among heritage professionals about increasing the effectiveness of inventory programs.

This paper reflects on more than a decade of experience with the establishment of heritage surveys and inventories at national and citywide scales in the Middle East and North America, and through site-based heritage management projects. In addition, it reflects on engagement with international professionals involved with heritage inventories.

Heritage inventories are permanent, ongoing records that require long-term institutional resource commitments. To be effective for heritage management, inventory programs should be established with links to heritage legislation, built upon data standards, and maintain dedicated personnel, programs of activity, and systems on an ongoing basis. Inventories are fundamentally different than heritage surveys, or other data collection activities, which collect information within a specific timeframe.

The findings are based on engagement with real-world, practical applications. It is hoped that the recommendations included will be useful to professionals working in heritage institutions that are establishing inventory programs, or seeking to modernize, invigorate, or increase the effectiveness of their inventory programs.

This paper presents insights gained through engagement with a large number and variety of heritage inventory and survey programs and projects from across the world, reflecting on broad trends and patterns.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the origins and development of national inventories in Scotland and Wales from paper-based records to digital databases. The impact of digital technologies on data management and dissemination is considered.

Exploring the evolution of historic environment inventories in Scotland and Wales highlights the common issues faced and solutions adopted. In considering the longue durée, the durability and flexibility of information is highlighted.

Inventories may combine locational, descriptive and visual material to help document a fragile, finite and non-renewable resource. They provide the evidence base for decision making and stewardship in managing change, stimulating interest in and valuing the historic environment. Contribution to recognised inventories should be a requirement for activities documenting the historic environment. Digital technologies shape the expectations of a modern inventory and associated digital archives, with emphasis placed on the repurposing of inventory contents so that they can better contribute to an information network serving multiple audiences.

Transformation from paper records to digital data has radically enhanced and democratised access to knowledge about the historic environment. Digital delivery helps place heritage data within mainstream societal activities and fosters public interest and engagement in the historic environment.

Inventories are the foundation building blocks of informed decision making. Digital technologies have transformed these resources to help place the historic environment within mainstream societal activities and interest.

The purpose of this paper is to present a concurrent implementation of sustainable inventory for the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Bat, Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn in the interior of Oman.

A digital heritage inventory (DHI) was developed through an action research to realize demands of the local agent and to co-design the solution. The Ministry of Heritage and Culture of Oman, the local agent, demanded to have archaeological information of the sites shared with foreign expeditions, which had worked at the sites for decades, for efficient heritage management, scientific research, outreach, and education. To this end, the Bat Digital Heritage Inventory (BatDHI) was implemented by a combination of network-access-ready database application, open source geographical information systems, and a web-based map service to incorporate and visualize previous works, which were concurrently cross-checked and updated by ground-truth surveys.

The online inventory made it possible to update information during archaeological fieldwork in real time and accelerated the decision-making process in heritage management by prompt data updates and visualization.

The DHI is extendable for other sites or regions. It should also be considered to install Arches, an open-source suite of digital heritage inventories.

The BatDHI was implemented through the action research mentioned in the design/methodology/approach section and yielded the implications mentioned in the findings section.

This paper is a challenging application of transdisciplinary approach to the sustainable heritage management, in which researchers and societal stakeholders collaborate for co-design of research agendas, co-production of knowledge, and co-dissemination of outcomes.

Over the past 20 years, heritage inventories in Flanders (Belgium) have evolved from printed books to digital inventories. The purpose of this paper is to look at this evolution and highlight the interaction between the system and its users.

After a short introduction about the history of inventories in Flanders, this paper mainly concerns itself with the last decade. Discrete topics will be highlighted to show the effects of the interaction that has taken place.

It is obvious that a system that publishes a digital inventory needs to adapt to the user requirements. But, after years of working with a digital inventory system, it has become apparent that not only has the system been developed to the users’ needs, but also that user practice and the resulting data have been shaped by the system. Seeing data projected on a common basemap has led researchers to realise how intertwined and interdependent different types of heritage can be and how much their respective methodologies can benefit from more interaction. It has become apparent that data quality is of the utmost importance, something that can only be guaranteed by data entry standards, validation tools, and a strict editing workflow. The systems that are being developed are not expected to live on forever, but the data in them is.

This paper presents real-life use cases and practical applications of building and maintaining a large digital inventory system over the years and through changes in organisational structure and focus. It provides insights that are hard to ascertain from smaller projects due to the volumes of data that are handled.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the history of heritage inventories in England and look at the requirements for a future vision of networked, digital heritage inventories to support heritage protection in England as outlined in the Heritage Information Access Strategy (HIAS). The strategy, led by Historic England, the UK Government-funded agency for heritage in England, is proposing a more formalized network where the prime sources of data relating to non-designated heritage assets will be the local authority historic environment records.

This paper looks at the historic development of the inventories from paper-based publications to digital data sets and the proliferation of data. The Monument Inventory Data Standard Heritage will also be discussed in the context of providing a common framework.

The present loose network presents several challenges for the multiple organizations maintaining similar data sets on disparate IT software, namely, the duplication of content, ownership of content and different approaches to recording practice and standards. There is a need for common data standards and controlled vocabularies in order to facilitate data exchange and interoperability across the network.

The findings are based on the common experience of heritage inventory providers in England, but are relevant to any country where multiple inventories exist. It is anticipated that the implementation of the HIAS will provide a future-proofed environment for a shared national inventory.

This paper presents the HIAS in its historic context. It is hoped that this may be of value to inventory programmes from outside the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the relevance of cultural heritage inventories and documentation as critical tools for heritage conservation and management in historic cities, through the case study of the historic city of Ahmadabad, India.

The paper discusses the creation of inventories as part of the comprehensive documentation undertaken for preparation of the World Heritage nomination dossier. In this context, the goal of preserving the outstanding universal value of the historic city formed the basis for selection and assessment of the assets to be included in the inventory. Standard processes and methodology employed for creation of the database involved archival research and planning; field surveys for mapping, photo documentation and data collection; data registration and processing using CAD, Ms Office and geographic information system (GIS)-based digital platform. Optimal data acquisition while maintaining cost and time efficiency was an important consideration for the fieldwork.

While an inventory remains a critical conservation tool, the heritage assets are integrally linked to and influenced by their surroundings in an urban context. A comprehensive documentation approach that provides a broader understanding of the city’s natural features, built environment, heritage resources, cultural practices and socio-economic networks is therefore necessary for creation of a suitable management plan for historic cities. Traditional field surveys based on external visual observation are time and cost effective, and can generate adequate information on identification and assessment of built heritage assets for creation of inventory along with documentation of their context. However, the scale of investigation and the intended role of an inventory as an urban management tool calls for creation of integrated, accessible and updatable data management systems.

At the moment, the database created is only used for the limited purpose of monitoring and managing the conservation of listed properties. The importance of the inventory as a critical conservation and urban management tool can be further validated once the GIS database of the historic city is integrated within the urban management and planning system for the city.

The inventory created for the historic city of Ahmadabad offers one of the few examples of heritage documentation at such a large scale. It covers an area of 543 ha with a detailed inventory of more than 6,000 properties. The description of, and the reflections on the process employed provide an overview of usual challenges encountered in creation, presentation and management of heritage inventories for historic cities which may offer useful guidelines to practitioners planning similar exercises and help them establish efficient work processes.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the South African Heritage Resources Information System (SAHRIS), developed by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) in 2011. The paper aims to describe how SAHRIS facilitates online applications for heritage approval and/or permits for developments and research, fulfils SAHRA’s mandate as a repository for a national inventory of heritage sites and objects in the country, and serves as an integrated, responsive tool for reporting heritage crimes and tracking the progress of the resultant cases. The paper also aims to explain, simply, the application processes for each of these functions.

The paper provides an explanation of the design and functions of the system and outlines how each of the content types and applications are created.

The system has improved the process of South African heritage resources management by decreasing the turnaround time for submissions to heritage authorities, raised the standards of good governance and increased public compliance with the heritage legislation.

Poor uptake of the system by provincial heritage authorities has limited the impact of the system on heritage management as practiced in South Africa.

The system, when used effectively provides an efficient service to the public, while promoting good governance, transparency, public access to information and improved compliance with the heritage legislation.

Through the creation of a single, unified platform for heritage management processes, geo-referencing of heritage sites and development areas, the provision of a national fossil sensitivity map, and the national heritage inventory, SAHRIS represents a world first in terms of proactive, integrated heritage management tools.