China’s World Cultural Heritage Monitoring System

At present, with the rapid social and economic development, culturalheritage utilities also joined into the rapid development. Since China hadjoined into the World Heritage Convention in1987, after20years ofdevelopment, China’s declaration of heritage populations was sharplyincreased year by year. China now has41World Heritages listed onWorld Heritage List, it inclusde27Single World Cultural Heritages. Withthe rapid development of heritage utilities, international and nationalorganization paid more and more attentions on world cultural heritagemonitoring and protection work.The world’s cultural heritage is national and also the commonwealth of mankind and the wisdom of the irreplaceable andnon-renewable. With the current economic and social development, theworld cultural heritage protection work faced a serious test, more andmore serious threats come to cultural heritage. Monitoring the world’scultural heritage not only the international responsibilities and obligationsof States Parties which shall provide the basis for decision making, butalso for the world cultural heritage protection and management of theworld cultural heritage of outstanding universal value, authenticity andintegrity can be maintained.World Heritage Site monitoring is based on a world cultural heritage of outstanding universal value, and put modern scientific techniques plusscientific management methods into the two dimensions of risk factorsfrom the value of carrier of the World Cultural Heritage (Heritage bodyand the environment) which affect the heritage value of the carrierperiodic, systematic and scientific observation and identification. It islooked as an objective reflection of the status quo of environmentalquality and heritage of the world’s cultural heritage and a comprehensiveassessment of heritage protection, to avoid the rapid deterioration of theheritage to the environment and cultural heritage. The monitoring resultsis also the basis of decision making with scientific management andprotection of cultural heritage, which has become the most basic of theworld Heritage protection, one of the most important work. Thusachieving a world cultural heritage protection and management of changecan be monitored, the risk can be predicted to protect the advance, andthe danger can be early warning and other targets.This article is based on the experts’ interviews, site field research,and project research as well as on the basis of the literature to build ourworld cultural heritage monitoring system. First, work through literaturesearching and heritage sites, field research, to analysis the monitoring ofWorld Heritage work status, and by the theory of the monitoring fromforeign heritage sites and the reference work to analysis the mainproblems and monitoring features of China’s heritage sites monitoring. Then, by reference to risk management theory, risk identification, riskassessment and risk control procedures we identify and build themonitoring system of the world cultural heritage sites in China.