Tech helps keep original looks of century-old villas

Heritage preservation

As the world heads toward a digital future, China has been promoting the use of digital and information technology to preserve cultural heritage.

"We treasure the value of architectural heritage, such as its historical, artistic and economic value," said Cao Yongkang, director of the International Research Center for Architectural Heritage Conservation at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

"The traditional preservation approaches, mainly depending on manual work and incomplete historical data, seem to be inefficient, while technology makes preservation more scientific."

Drone aerial photogrammetry, a technique used to update maps of historical buildings, has been used in collecting data on the historical area at Xida Street in Jiading district. The map, with real-time geographic information, provides the possibility of establishing a historical building database.

The geographic information system, a framework for gathering, managing and analyzing spatial data, is utilized in the management of the East Siwenli area－a cluster of buildings in Jing'an district dating back to the mid-19th century known as shikumen, a Shanghai architectural style featuring Western and Chinese elements.

Building and environmental elements, covering windows and pillars, are classified and numbered in the system, forming an online management platform.

Based on big data, an experimental platform has been developed for the digital management of 4,000 immovable cultural relics in Shanghai.

Cao said digital and information technologies have been applied in around 20 percent of the city's architectural heritage preservation projects.

"It will likely cover the vast majority of projects in the future," he said.