Development of an Open-Source 3D WebGIS Framework to Promote Cultural Heritage Dissemination

Italian territory is characterized by a conspicuous number of cultural heritage sites to be promoted and preserved. Therefore, regional, and local authorities feel the need to identify an economic and efficient solution to monitor their status and encourage their knowledge among heritage and environmental agencies and the business communities. Usually, Geographical Information Systems have been introduced to store and manage data concerning cultural heritage sites albeit, just in the last few years, its role is becoming more and more important thanks to the development of web applications. These ones allow helping cultural heritage dissemination as well as providing a relevant tool to data treatment. Therefore, in this study, an interactive WebGIS platform aimed at supporting cultural heritage management and enhancement has been developed. In accordance with the standards proposed by the Open Geospatial Consortium and EU directive INSPIRE, Free and Open-Source Software for Geographic information systems were applied to develop proper codes aimed at implementing the whole three-tier configuration. Moreover, a user-friendly interactive interface was also programmed to help IT and non-IT users in stored data management. Although the proposed WebGIS appears as the optimal tool to meet research purposes, further improvements are still needed to handle multiple contacts simultaneously and increase the real-time processing options. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.