Macao World Heritage Monitoring Centre officially inaugurated to improve the mechanism for the protection of Macao’s World Heritage, with the use of modern technologies
In order to further improve the mechanism for the protection of Macao’s World Heritage, build an intelligent, standardised and systematic World Heritage protection and management system that can better meet the international and national protection and management requirements, establish the positioning of Macao as “a base for exchange and cooperation where Chinese culture is the mainstream and diverse cultures coexist”, with the support of the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China, the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC, from its Portuguese acronym) has established and inaugurated the Macao World Heritage Monitoring Centre on 16 November. The Monitoring Centre is located at No. 5-7, Rua de Sanches de Miranda.
Today (16 November), also marks the day of the 50th anniversary of the UNESCO’s Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. An opening ceremony was held in the afternoon on this same day, being officiated by the the Deputy Director of the National Cultural Heritage Administration, Guan Qiang; the President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR Government, Leong Wai Man; the Deputy Director of the Department of Publicity and Culture of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Macao SAR, Yin Rutao; and the Vice President of the China Academy of Cultural Heritage, Li Li. This important ceremony was widely attended, including the presence of the Conservative of the Land Registry Office, Leong Mei Leng; the representative of the President of the Administration Committee on Municipal Affairs of the Municipal Affairs Bureau, Lee On Yee; members of the Cultural Heritage Committee, including Lee Hay Ip, Ip Tat, Jiang Chun and Tam Chi Kuong; the Head of the Department of Cultural Heritage, Choi Kin Long; the Head of the Division for Cultural Heritage Conservation, Ho Cheok Fong; and the Head of the Division for Research and Planning, Sou Kin Meng.
Macao represents the principal point of convergence of modern Chinese and Western cultures. For hundreds of years, under a social structure that always had Chinese culture as the dominant population, different nationalities and different cultures coexisted harmoniously in Macao with mutual respect, accumulating a rich trove of historical heritage that has become a vivid testimony about the harmonious exchange of Chinese and Western cultures in the History of mankind. Since the inscription of the Historic Centre of Macao on the World Heritage List, in 2005, having been the 31st World Heritage site in China, Macao has, over the years, gradually established a system of protection laws, monitoring and management, research and utilisation, social publicity, and international exchange and cooperation for World Heritage with joint efforts from all sectors of society. “Monitoring” is an important means to understand the overall protection and management status of the city’s World Heritage, helping to track the trend of changes to certain elements with the passage of time, being therefore an important requirement in the international World Heritage Convention and a crucial topic in China’s protection efforts for each heritage site.
Since 2019, IC launched the construction of the Macao World Heritage Monitoring Centre with the guidance and technical support from the National Cultural Heritage Administration and the China Academy of Cultural Heritage. By formulating a monitoring plan for the Historic Centre of Macao that meets the needs of heritage protection, IC has standardised various technical specifications for heritage data collection for the further systematic and automatic monitoring of the World Heritage. The Monitoring Centre uses special monitoring instruments and communication networks for monitoring specific factors, and sends the results together with the data and information collected manually, making use of monitoring cloud mobile applications to enable an alert system platform for the comprehensive analysis and processing, prompt issuance of alert messages, and centralised management of various heritage protection and management data and information. The accumulated records become permanent records that can be used as references in future operations, making Macao’s World Heritage protection more systematic and more in line with international and national protection and management standards.
After coming into operation, the Monitoring Centre will give priority to the protection of the 22 core World Heritage buildings and the 8 classified squares inside the Historic Centre of Macao. The Centre will comprehensively evaluate the various factors affecting heritage protection and devise more thorough and targeted protection measures by systematically collecting, analysing and recording the changes in the heritage sites, gradually integrating external environmental data, provided by different designated departments, such as temperature and humidity, meteorology, tourist management and visitor density around the heritage sites, and analysing the data through its data platform, so as to allow the responsible departments to fully understand the actual status of each site and devise more thorough and targeted protection measures.
The establishment of the Macao World Heritage Monitoring Centre marks a new milestone in the protection of Macao’s World Heritage, which is of great significance for promoting smart World Heritage protection that has the support of information technologies while establishing the positioning of Macao as “a base for exchange and cooperation where Chinese culture is the mainstream and diverse cultures coexist”. In the future, IC will make full use of smart technology to protect the World Heritage buildings, broadening the scope of data collection, processing and analysis functions of the Macao World Heritage Monitoring Centre, while continuing to upgrade the World Heritage monitoring mechanism, in order to effectively protect the World Heritage of Macao.
