Describing, comparing and analysing digital urban heritage tools: A methodology designed with a multidisciplinary approach

Abstract

Urban cultural heritage is taking full advantage of digital technologies. This can be seen in the great number of digital tools for representing and interacting with cultural heritage (digital urban heritage tools) that are intended for the public or designed in the context of research programs and dedicated to a more limited public. These tools do not only display heritage, but also permit interaction with it, even allowing users to contribute with their own data (knowledge, memories, documents, questions, etc.). In this article, we present and apply a methodology for describing, analysing and comparing these tools. After observing the lack of such a methodology, we built DHAL (Digital urban Heritage tools AnaLysis). This methodology allows for qualitative and multidisciplinary analysis of digital urban heritage tools that combine at least two of the following aspects: digital representation of the city, multimedia data documenting the city and its heritage, and participatory functionalities for adding to the digital city. Firstly, we introduce the methodology and the process established for building it. We then show its application, usefulness and full potential in the context our project (Fab-Pat) by testing it on twelve tools. This implementation-one possible among others-allows the positioning of the Fab-Pat tool among similar tools and a detailed description of them. We conclude with a discussion of the methodology's advantages and potential avenues for future developments.

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