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Historical figures have important significance worldwide. This paper introduces the concept of historical Geographical Information System (HGIS) using the lives of two personalities from Chinese history as case studies: Su Shi, a literary figure of the Northern Song Dynasty, and Zuo Zongtang, a military strategist from the late Qing era. By studying the geographical points marking their life activities, their migratory patterns were explored, along with the dynamics of their social networks within time and space, examining the distinctive phases and characteristics of their individual journeys. Kernel density estimation, standard deviation ellipse, location-based distance analysis, and social network graphs were employed in this work. Our findings reveal that Su Shi’s migrations were largely dictated by official appointments, ultimately rooted in imperial successions and factional strife, with his intellectual pursuits significantly influenced by the humanistic milieu. Conversely, Zuo Zongtang’s migrations were predominantly shaped by war, reflecting the challenges of the late Qing era in relation to governance, sovereignty, and diplomacy. The military encampments selected by Zuo Zongtang tended to be situated near water sources, illustrating how his migratory trajectory was influenced by natural geographic conditions. The social circles of these figures are tied to their social and political stature. Through the socio-historic context, the characteristics of these historical figures’ behavioral trajectories relate to the unfolding process of societal and historical development. These insights offer a glimpse into the life journey behind historical figures, implicitly highlighting their perseverance and resilience in adversity, thereby describing innovative approaches to inheriting and disseminating the cultural legacy.

ABSTRACTArchitectural heritage has important historical, artistic, and technological value. However, these sites are subject to long-term degradation and are sensitive to disturbances from the surrounding landscape, resulting in the potential deterioration of the architecture. Deformation is a quantitative indicator of the vulnerability of architectural heritage. The extraction of three-dimensional (3D) deformation via existing geodetic approaches, such as global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), proves to be a challenging task. In this study, we proposed an adaptable methodology for the preventive monitoring of architectural heritage by integrating differential SAR tomography (D-TomoSAR) and a finite element method (FEM) to overcome the limitations of current geodetic approaches in cultural applications (i.e., sparse measurements in space; time- and labor-intensive). The Angkor Wat Temple, a well-known monument at the Angkor World Heritage site, Cambodia, was selected as the investigation target. We used D-TomoSAR to calculate the deformation, height, and thermal dilation of the structure using 46 TerraSAR-X images acquired during 2011–2013. InSAR deformation measurements were used as the constraint for the 3D deformation simulation and structural monitoring using an integrated approach to diagnose the soundness of the architectural structure. The experimental results demonstrate the following: 1) the integration of InSAR measurements prevented the underestimation of structural instabilities and linked the simplified physical model and mechanical parameters to the FEM simulation. 2) The Angkor Wat Temple appeared stable; however, structural instabilities were detected with an absolute deformation rate of up to 3 mm/yr. 3) Daily changes in thermal-related deformations caused by incoming frontal and posterior solar radiation-induced the bending of the architecture and the risk of structural defects. Our study reveals the defect mechanism of the Angkor Wat Temple and demonstrates the potential of the proposed method for the health diagnosis and preventive safeguarding of architectural heritages across the globe.

The quantification of the extent and dynamics of land-use changes is a key metric employed to assess the progress toward several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that form part of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. In terms of anthropogenic factors threatening the conservation of heritage properties, such a metric aids in the assessment of achievements toward heritage sustainability solving the problem of insufficient data availability. Therefore, in this study, 589 cultural World Heritage List (WHL) properties from 115 countries were analyzed, encompassing globally distributed and statistically significant samples of “monuments and groups of buildings” (73.2%), “sites” (19.3%), and “cultural landscapes” (7.5%). Land-cover changes in the WHL properties between 2015 and 2020 were automatically extracted from big data collections of high-resolution satellite imagery accessed via Google Earth Engine using intelligent remote sensing classification. Sustainability indexes (SIs) were estimated for the protection zones of each property, and the results were employed, for the first time, to assess the progress of each country toward SDG Target 11.4. Despite the apparent advances in SIs (10.4%), most countries either exhibited steady (20.0%) or declining (69.6%) SIs due to limited cultural investigations and enhanced negative anthropogenic disturbances. This study confirms that land-cover changes are among serious threats for heritage conservation, with heritage in some countries wherein the need to address this threat is most crucial, and the proposed spatiotemporal monitoring approach is recommended.