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The development of storage standards for databases of different natures and origins makes it possible to aggregate and interact with different data sources in order to obtain and show complex and thematic information to the end user. This article aims to analyze some possibilities opened up by new applications and hypothesize their possible developments. With this work, using the currently available Web technologies, we would like to verify the potential for the use of Linked Open Data in the world of WebGIS and illustrate an application that allows the user to interact with Linked Open Data through their representation on a map. Italy has an artistic and cultural heritage unique in the world and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism has created and made freely available a dataset in Linked Open Data format that represents it. With the aim of enhancing and making this heritage more usable, the National Research Council (CNR) has created an application that presents this heritage via WebGIS on a map. Following criteria definable by the user, such as the duration, the subject of interest and the style of the trip, tourist itineraries are created through the places that host this heritage. New possibilities open up where the tools made available by the Web can be used together, according to pre-established sequences, to create completely new applications. This can be compared to the use of words, all known in themselves, which, according to pre-established sequences, allow us to create ever new texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural tourism development potential (CTDP) is the future value and supporting force of the environmental value, economic and social efficiency, innovation ability and supporting system of cultural tourism. At present, there are few relevant studies on CTDP, but the research results on the tourism development potential of cultural heritage are relatively rich, and the existing evaluation methods lack comprehensiveness, dynamics and visualization. Based on systems theory and sustainable development theory, this article attempts to innovate and collect time series data through the entropy method, multi-index comprehensive evaluation method, spatial kernel density estimation method, and centroid transferring model. The temporal and spatial evolution characteristics and the CTDP of 43 cities in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River are examined and analyzed. It is found that the CTDP in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River is divided into five levels; the overall potential intensity of the research area is small and has significant spatial differences; influenced by the time factor, the interaction and spatial correlation of within the research area are significant; the development of regional cultural tourism has strong regional dependence in the short range. The center of potential gradually moves to the geometric center. This study is significant for promoting the sustainable development of economic tourism in cradles of world civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, moving from a two-dimensional environment to a more advanced interactive three-dimensional (3D) environment in the industries of architecture, engineering, and construction has become one of the most significant topics of interest. This is due to several primary advantages that the 3D environment can offer. Building information modeling (BIM) can be used as a highly advanced system to present a desired reality in a 3D interactive environment accompanied with 3D reality captured data, such as the point cloud data. As such, these 3D environments can be employed for more advanced uses, such as virtual reality and augmented reality technologies (VR and AR). Recently, BIM has been employed in the context of heritage (known as HBIM, or Heritage Building Information Modeling) for different purposes, such as to provide as-built information with the ability to interact with the end user and uploading information (e.g., historical photographs, documents about materials, or any past restoration projects) into the BIM model. This research will focus on providing an interactive rich virtual 3D model for heritage management. This virtual environment can be employed in cultural tourism and used for the abovementioned purposes. The research project has been adopted in the case of the Zainal Historical House (Bayt Zainal) located in the Historic District of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This house is described as one of the significant historical buildings in the historic district. The key aim for selecting this case study is to bridge the gap in architectural knowledge regarding these heritage buildings and their hybrid structural systems (i.e., integration of steel or concrete with the traditional "Mangbi" stone technique). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The industry of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) tourism continues to grow, and social media can serve as an essential tool to promote this trend. Although ICH tourism development is outstanding in China, the language structure and restricted use of social media render ICH difficult for non-Chinese speakers to understand. Using content analysis, this study investigates the structure and relationships among cognitive elements of ICH tourism based on 9074 blogs posted between 2011 and 2020 on Weibo.com, one of the most popular social media platforms in China. The main analysis process consisted of matrix construction, dimension classification, and semantic network analysis. Findings indicated that the cognitive image of ICH tourism on social media can be divided into seven dimensions: institutions, ICH and inheritors, tourism products, traditional festivals and seasons, tourism facilities and services, visitors, and regions. This network vividly illustrates ICH tourism and depicts the roles of organizers, residents, inheritors, and tourists. Among these elements, institutions hold the greatest power to regulate and control ICH tourism activities, and folklore appears to be the most common type of ICH resource that can be developed into tourism activities. Practically, the results offer insight for policymakers regarding ways to better balance the relationships among heritage protection, the business economy, and people's well-being. Such strategies can promote the industrialization of ICH tourism. In addition, through content analysis, this paper confirms the effectiveness of social media in providing a richer understanding of ICH tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jeju Island comes second to only Seoul as Korea's most visited destination, yet most visitors do not have the chance to go beyond brief visits and immerse themselves in the island's history and cultural heritage. This project introduces the cultural heritage of Jeju Island to visitors through virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) model visualization technology, namely JejuView, which provides an intuitive way to experience cultural heritage sites on the island. The proposed VR/AR application is designed to introduce a series of heritage spots on Jeju Island through (i) a printed Jeju map with embedded QR code markers that enable viewers to experience the locations without being present at the site, (ii) a mobile device with WebGL supported browser which allows 3D content to be rendered, and (iii) an AR library (A-Frame.io) that enables enthusiasts to recreate similar work. To test the effectiveness of the proposed VR/AR application, the authors conducted an experiment with 251 participants to test the research model based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) and employed generalized structured component analysis (GSCA) for the analysis. Results show that when using sensory new media such as VR/AR, consumers are more focused on the hedonic value than on the utilitarian value of the information. In conclusion, the proposed VR/AR application is complementary to existing studies and provides significant support to researchers, engineers, and designers developing VR/AR technologies for use in cultural education and tourism marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]