Cultural heritage management and monitoring using remote sensing data and GIS: The case study of Paphos area, Cyprus

Abstract

Cultural heritage (CH) sites are threatened from a variety of natural and anthropogenic factors. Innovative andcost effective tools for systematic monitoring of landscapes and CH sites are needed to protect them. Towardsthis directi on, the article presen ts a multidisciplinary approach, based on remote sen sing techniques andGeog raphical Infor mation System (GIS) analysis, in order to assess th e overall risk in the Pa phos distr ict(Cyprus). Paphos region has a great deal of archaeological sites and isolated monuments, which reflect thelong history of the area, while some of them are also listed in the UNESCO catalogue of World Cultural Heritagesites. Several natural and anthropogenic hazards have been mapped using different remote sensing data andmethodologies. All data were gathered from satellite images and satellite products. The results from each hazardwere imported into a GIS environment in order to examine the overall risk assessment based on the AnalyticHierarchy Process (AHP) methodology. The results found that the methodology applied was effective enough intheunderstandingofthecurrentconservationcircumstances of the monuments in relation to their environmentas well as predicting the future development of the present hazards