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Heritage cities are challenged by a combination of pressures, including climate change effects, rapid urbanization and abandonment. Conversely, a plethora of new methodologies and instruments are now available, thanks to digital technologies, which hold the potential to support planning conservation of heritage cities. This study seeks to explore the applicability of digital technologies to heritage conservation planning practices, in Jordan, with a more general applicability of some findings to the larger international context. Opportunities and limitations in supporting plans for heritage conservation in heritage cities through digital technologies are discussed. This study analyses several forms of data, including secondary data, semi-structured interviews with heritage experts and focus groups. Recommendations are made to maximise the potential of digital technologies in both eliciting awareness on heritage and documenting it for the purpose of developing more robust and effective conservation plans for heritage cities.

The impact of digital technologies to the domain of cultural heritage has increased the speed and automation of the processes and practices that involve processing and presentation of digital heritage data. Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) and Virtual Reality (VR) can play a key role towards the conservation, preservation, and management of architectural heritage. This includes the preservation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage at multiple levels. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of digital storytelling through digital technologies by integrating intangible data and information to the tangible heritage in the scan-to-BIM process. The paper builds on few works that have begun to investigate the classification of intangible qualitative heritage data within a BIM and VR context for heritage assets. This exploration demonstrates that the incorporation of both qualitative and quantitative information about a heritage-built asset has value in the (re)interpretation, documentation and preservation of cultural heritage. The development of HBIM and VR in this paper is to bring together heterogeneous data that has the potential to provide a model for future work in the field of heritage conservation and digital technologies. The city of Surat is used as a case study for exploring the potential of digital storytelling for the city’s urban heritage. Indeed, this holistic integration can enhance the awareness of urban cultural heritage to support the processes of local urban heritage conservation for key stakeholders such as local Government, heritage conservation experts, urban planners and local communities.

The rich architectural and urban heritage of Jordan is under continuing threat not only through means of physical attack but also physical disaster, increasing urbanization and a diminishing value from multiple stakeholders such as owners and users. This research study explores the potential of digital technologies in documenting and preserving urban architectural heritage in Jordan. Data was collected from diverse stakeholders on heritage conservation in Jordan. The findings evidence that Building Information Modelling (BIM) has the potential to create a classification system for heritage buildings under threat and set forth the application of legislation and regulations about heritage . The study demonstrated that the collection of data information needs to be understood through the context of cultural sensitivity. Lack of awareness in the value of cultural heritage from local communities exacerbates the diminishing efforts in preserving cultural assets. In collecting information for the documentation of this heritage, this study categorizes the challenges of preserving urban heritage as either hierarchical or cultural. The collection, management and storing of data for digital heritage requires an awareness of the issues of time and the power structures that are involved in their collection and upon which they have a profound effect.

Currently, heritage is challenged in the Indian city of Surat due to diverse pressures, including rapid urbanization, increasing housing demand, and socio-cultural and climate changes. Where rapid demographic growth of urban areas is happening, heritage is disappearing at an alarming rate. Despite some efforts from the local government, urban cultural heritage is being neglected and historic buildings keep being replaced by ordinary concrete buildings at a worryingly rapid pace. Discussions of challenges and issues of Surat’s urban area is supported by a qualitative dataset, including in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with local policy makers, planners, and heritage experts, triangulated by observation and a photo-survey of two historic areas. Findings from this study reveal a myriad of challenges such as: inadequacy of urban conservation management policies and processes focused on heritage, absence of skills, training, and resources amongst decision makers and persistent conflict and competition between heritage conservation needs and developers’ interests. Furthermore, the values and significance of Surat’s tangible and intangible heritage is not fully recognized by its citizens and heritage stakeholders. A crucial opportunity exists for Surat to maximize the potential of heritage and reinforce urban identity for its present and future generations. Surat’s context is representative of general trends and conservation challenges and therefore recommendations developed in this study hold the potential to offer interesting insights to the wider planners and conservationists’ international community. This paper recommends thoughtful integration of sustainable heritage urban conservation into local urban development frameworks and the establishment of approaches that recognize the plurality of heritage values.

The Agenda 2030 includes a set of targets that need to be achieved by 2030. Although none\ud of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focuses exclusively on cultural heritage, the\ud resulting Agenda includes explicit reference to heritage in SDG 11.4 and indirect reference to other\ud Goals. Achievement of international targets shall happen at local and national level, and therefore,\ud it is crucial to understand how interventions on local heritage are monitored nationally, therefore\ud feeding into the sustainable development framework. This paper is focused on gauging the\ud implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals with reference to cultural heritage, by\ud interrogating the current way of classifying it (and consequently monitoring). In fact, there is no\ud common dataset associated with monitoring SDGs, and the field of heritage is extremely complex\ud and diversified. The purpose for the paper is to understand if the taxonomy used by different\ud national databases allows consistency in the classification and valuing of the different assets\ud categories. The European case study has been chosen as field of investigation, in order to pilot a\ud methodology that can be expanded in further research. A cross‐comparison of a selected sample of\ud publicly accessible national cultural heritage databases has been conducted. As a result, this study\ud confirms the existence of general harmonisation of data towards the achievement of the SDGs with\ud a broad agreement of the conceptualisation of cultural heritage with international frameworks, thus\ud confirming that consistency exists in the classification and valuing of the different assets categories.\ud However, diverse challenges of achieving a consistent and coherent approach to integrating culture\ud in sustainability remains problematic. The findings allow concluding that it could be possible to\ud mainstream across different databases those indicators, which could lead to depicting the overall\ud level of attainment of the Agenda 2030 targets on heritage. However, more research is needed in\ud developing a robust correlation between national datasets and international targets.

Heritage cities are facing unprecedented pressure, due to the combination of climate change impacts, rapid urbanization and uncontrolled growth. Historic urban centres in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries are particularly exposed. This paper discusses the benefit of applying digital technologies, and in particular Building Information Modeling (BIM), in supporting heritage conservation, by developing a proof of concept based on a purposely chosen case study, i.e. the traditional Jordanian city of As-Salt near Amman. Building on and moving forward the tradition of paper-based Conservation Handbooks for historic cities, this study aims at exploiting the potential of digital technologies for enhancing the development and implementation of Digital Conservation Handbooks. Documentation and promoting of As-Salt will be conducted through developing a set of virtual models (3D models and BIM objects) suitable to support the construction sector and traditional architecture and heritage, framed and delivered in form of Digital Conservation Handbook. This will be achieved by: developing a new set of BIM (Building Information Modeling) objects related to the traditional architecture heritage in Jordan, suitable to be used by engineers and architects in the development of interventions on the built environment; creating a library of 3D models of exemplar buildings (Jordan heritage and traditional architecture), suitable to be used to promote the tourist image of Jordan. This will set a precedent for further documentation and heritage conservation of traditional cities in Jordan, MENA countries and internationally. Finally, the paper will discuss issues and challenges of documenting traditional heritage and architecture in As-Salt and the impact that such process may achieve in raising awareness across the local communities, thus offering insights to the larger community of architects, conservationists, and planners.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of commonalities and differences in the concept of cultural heritage in Europe. This was achieved through a comprehensive academic and non-academic literature review focused on different definitions and conceptualisations related to cultural heritage internationally and in the European context. This is complemented with a comparative study in three European countries. This paper frames cultural heritage using the foundation set up by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). It further discusses the European actors involved in defining heritage today. Finally, it focuses on three European countries and verifies that they share an understanding of cultural heritage including classifications, categorisation and heritage values. Findings from the overall study show how the definition of cultural heritage across Europe is reasonably homogeneous, and this is confirmed by the analysis of the three chosen test case studies. This finding is relevant to policy makers as it allows the support of potential common frameworks for heritage management at the European level, including risk management and risk reduction common methodologies. Further studies will shed light on the implementation issues which may arise from the creation of a common European framework for cultural heritage management, with emphasis on risk management and risk reduction of cultural heritage.