Portraying heritage corridor dynamics and cultivating conservation strategies based on environment spatial model: an integration of multi-source data and image semantic segmentation

Abstract Under the background of the transformation of resource-based cities, heritage as the symbolic cultural representation plays a synergistic role in revitalizing urban vibrancy. A majority of contemporary research focuses on specific heritage restoration and renovation. However, scant literature has been concerned with an integrated heritage corridor upgrading framework from the spatial quality perspective, which has limited effects on promoting urban socio-cultural development. This research aims to evaluate the heritage corridor through the GIS-based environmental spatial model (ESM) with multi-source data and verification through AI-based image semantic segmentation analysis, cultivating suggestions for heritage restoration and management to revitalize the holistic urban–rural areas. The research takes a resource-based city, Fengfeng Mining District (FMD) in Handan, China, as a research case. The research found heterogeneity of the heritage evaluation results and their geographical distribution, and image-based spatial quality verification evidenced the suitability and reliability of ESM for heritage assessment. This research proposes a quantitative and holistic evaluation framework for assessing and improving heritage corridors. The restoration and optimization of heritage corridors should combine a comprehensive, precise, and people-oriented spatial quality assessment, and the GIS-based ESM analysis method could be an effective decision-making support system.