The sustainable management of cultural heritage in tourist destinations: a mobile GIS approach

Cultural heritage (CH) is increasingly vulnerable to both natural and human disasters, including pressure from the tourism industry. In such circumstances, the problem of insufficient monitoring particularly affects the CH of regional and local significance. In this research, we aim to fill this gap by designing and testing a new GIS-based digital tool for monitoring and inventorying CH sites by dedicated cultural heritage management institutions (CHMI). The methodology followed the Design Science Research paradigm and used the ArcGIS Survey123 application to collect field data in three Polish health tourism destinations. The results confirmed the usefulness of the mobile GIS system for CHMIs in preventive conservation, rapid damage assessment and participatory heritage management. The study contributes to the literature by extending GIS applications to under-researched regional and local CH, providing a repeatable documentation protocol and a practical management cycle to support sustainable conservation practices.