Open Source Interactive Map of Albania Cultural Heritage

ICTs represent strategic resources for Cultural Heritage (CH) projects. Anyway, several conditions put the success of promotion projects at risk, especially if carried out at the local level. Firstly, local scale amplifies the weight of budget constraints on the priorities of public administrations, compelled to allocate funds to the physical conservation of heritage rather than to software and training. Secondly, proprietary SW, often sophisticated and complex in procedures, fails to integrate precious unformalized knowledge from local stakeholders and communities, particularly in the field of cultural tourism. Finally, a changing demand for cultural tourism, with potential visitors frequently searching for information directly on the Web before moving, requires a higher interactivity in tools and systems. The paper illustrates the work carried out at the Construction Technologies Institute for delivering procedures and SW specifically designed to simplify the publication of geo-referenced information and reduce the need for specialized skills and equipments. The described results were achieved along different research programs focusing on the Albanian CH with a learning-by-doing approach.