Dr. Laxmi Kant Sharma
Assistant Professor, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, India
Email- [email protected]
Ritu Nathawat
B.Arch, Aayojan School of Architecture, Jaipur, India
Email- [email protected]
Prem Chandra Pandey
Inspire Fellow, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, India
Email- [email protected]
Dr. M. S. Nathawat
Professor of Geography, IGNOU, New Delhi, India
Email- [email protected]
Introduction:
Environmental protection and encroachments have turned out to be a cause for heritage and cultural conservation. Heritage and cultural assets should be given special importance than the public and private places. Heritage assets, cultural life and its history are the main elements of a city’s identity (Borer, 2006). City is considered to be peculiar with its historical heritage, cultural concept and society. The identity of the heritage should be treated as regional term and not at local term for conservation strategies. Due to heritage conservation at regional label, there is development of the concept of identity, cultural attractiveness and sense of location (Lieber, 2002). Heritage conservation means to prioritise large geographical eco-regions and developing targeted outcomes at global level. Development of crisis-driven and opportunistic approaches for conservation was broadly explored in particular reference to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) (Hails, 2007).
The development of conservation strategies for protection of heritage and cultural buildings at global level brings the attention of the World Heritage Convention rules (UNESCO Report, 2010). At global level, UNESCO has declared many sites as world heritage and efforts have been made to protect them from destruction. According to the World Heritage Convention rule, each country shall provide precise information indicating the boundary of the site as well as the boundary of the ‘buffer zone’ surrounding the site of the heritage and cultural buildings. The Convention also requests that both of these areas (site-boundary and site-buffer zone) should be protected by an appropriate legislation.
Landscape change may act as barrier in conservation of the heritage assets, as accessibility, urbanisation and globalisation have affected nature and pace of the changes (Antrop, 2005). At the regional level, self management was found to be suitable as a goal of conservation strategies (Maria, 2003). Spatial information technology applications were developed for cultural heritage conservation, especially the large-scale heritage sites like Grand Canal of China (Mao, 2008).
Urban city sites face a variety of potential threats which includes uncontrolled agricultural and urban development, regional conflicts, natural catastrophes, and climate change. The interests toward heritage assets conservation strategies aim at preserving and conserving the historical architecture, cultural properties. The most touching work during conservation strategies is the identification of the values and analysis of the current scenario of the historical building/heritage at a place.
The main objective of study is integration of spatial information using high resolution satellite imagery for heritage asset conservation. The applicability of GIS environment has been applied in conservation, documentation and promotion of the heritage assets (Droj, 2011). Preparing strategies for conservation planning and management of heritage buildings like open space, buffer regions, scenic beauty maintenance (restriction of the construction of multi-storey buildings and apartments nearby heritage monuments and buildings). The potential conservation strategies adopted will encourage linking of all heritage and cultural assets exactly. Thus, the aim of the study is the accurate mapping of the heritage assets with a step to protect and conserve the historical heritage for our future generations. With the enhanced spatial resolution of World view-2 data (MSS 2.5 m and Pan-0.5 m), image interpretation is processed further in GIS environment for thematic layer preparation of the heritages of the region. The outcomes will help in heritage mapping with detailed accuracy and conservation management of the heritage assets.
Study Area
The case study area is a part of Jaipur district, Rajasthan state, India, having spatial extent of 26 º 55 ′ 30.30 ″ N to 26º57′42.91″ N and 75º48′59.09″ E to 75º 51 ′26.02″ E with an area of approximately 16.5 square Kilometre (Fig.-1). The study area is situated at an altitude of 431 m above sea level. The monument and heritage building selected for the case study were- Jal Mahal, Jantar Mantar and Hawa Mahal. Jal Mahal (Water Palace) built in 18th century, is a monument located in the middle of the Man Sagar Lake in Jaipur city (Fig. 2.a and 2.b). Jantar Mantar is an added feather in total heritage lists of India. It was built in the 18th century. The Jantar Mantar (Fig. 2.c and 2.d) is of astrological significance which were collection of architectural monuments to measure time, to predict eclipses, track location of the stars as the earth orbits around the sun, ascertain the declinations of planets and to determine the celestial altitudes. The heritage asset Hawa Mahal (Fig. 2.e and 2.f) is a multi-layered palace which was built in 1799, known as Jaipur’s signature building. This is five storey building of unusual architecture- pyramid shaped structure, tier of 953 small casements, each with tiny lattice perforated worked pink windows, small arched roofs with hanging cornices, exquisitely modelled and carved. These small windows circulate cool air even in hot months.
Fig 1. Location map of the study area. 
Fig. 2. Heritage buildings and monuments selected for the study. Methodology
The aim of this work is to evaluate the applicability of very high spatial resolution images for heritage conservation strategies. The software used in the study includes ERDAS Imagine 9.1 and Arc GIS 9.2 to carry out image enhancement and other spectral modelling and map layouts works respectively.
Geospatial techniques with multi-spectral images are used for accurate extraction of the buildings shape and size using Arc GIS 9.2 software. The proposed methodology (Fig.-3) was conducted in historically important city of Jaipur known as pink city for identification of the heritage building sites for conservation strategies. This case study was carried out with high resolution World View-2 (Table.1) satellite imagery- panchromatic image of 0.5 m high spatial resolutions and multi-spectral image of 2.4 m respectively and a vector cartographic map at the 1:1000 scales. Digitisation of different layers (building occupied, open space) was performed on satellite imagery in the study to calculate on-floor area ratio. On-floor area ratio, as shown in equation-1 corresponds to the occupied space by the building to total space.
OFR= Actual space occupied by building / Total Space —— Equation-1
The buffering operation is performed for the creation of protective zone for the building or monument as shown in the Fig. 4 (c, f and i) and buffer protected zonal area is demonstrated in table.2. This buffer zone will act as barrier for the encroachment activities and any further construction in or around site. Concerning the conservation of the heritage for sustainable benefit people participation is a must along with strategies. The developed strategies include the identification, analysis, work in GIS environment and tools. [Insert Table.1] [Insert Fig. 3]
Table no. 1. Satellite imagery used in the study. 
Fig.3. Paradigm of the study methodology adopted in the study. Results and Discussions
The ground area occupied by the heritage assets were 3189.03 square metre for Jalmahal, 612.47 square metre for Jantar Mantar and 904.38 square metre for Hawamahal. Table 2 illustrated the heritage building constructed area, base area, and total area of selected assets. These findings were used for the calculation of the OFR and thus interpreting the pattern of construction of the assets in the city. Quantitative Analysis of asset pattern was demonstrated by calculating the total area of construction in defined region which helped in spatial information for heritage asset conservation. The OFR output came to be 0.596, 0.376 and 0.529 for the assets as shown in table-2. The ground space was area occupied by the heritage asset and open space was the area surrounding assets as shown in Fig.-4 (b, e and h). The ratio of these two gave OFR and thus reveals the pattern of construction of heritage. 0.59 indicate the maximum area occupied by the Jalmahal and 0.37 indicate asset has more open space inside and its surroundings for Jantar Mantar in defined region. For Jal Mahal, the case was very interesting due to its location in mid- lake. During summer, the OFR was suited very well due to drying of lake but in other seasons especially in rainy the building seems to be floating in water covered with water Hyacinth. These give the pattern of construction and an idea about its beauty and architectural design. [Insert Fig.4, Table. 2 & Table.3 here]
Fig.4. Heritage sites, Base area- open space and buffer applications on three heritage asset. 
Table.2. Base area and on floor area ratio for heritage buildings in Jaipur district, Rajasthan 
Table.3. Buffer distance and threat rank for heritage buildings in Jaipur district, Rajasthan The application of the buffer zone at fixed criteria < 50, 50-100, 100-150 m were applied for all the heritage assets and ranked accordingly for threat potential as 1, 2 and 3 (Fig. 4. c, f and i). Table 3 demonstrates the buffer regions of the chosen heritage buildings and area at three buffer rings. The inner buffer region was the most susceptible for the encroachment and might damage the scenic beauty of the heritage which had been assessed as priority area for conservation point of view. The three zones defined for conservation plan is divided in to protected area, prohibited area and regulated area. The core zone area for, Hawamahal, Jantar Mantar and Jalmahal came to be 15817.979 sq. m, 17530.800 sq. m and 21957.88 sq. m. Thus, inner zone (Protected) should not be disturbed and used for any other human activities. The middle zone (prohibited) should be protected with minimum activities. The outer zone (Regulated) can be used for tourism development and scenic maintenance. The required buffer zones are protected, prohibited, regulated for the conservation of the historical monuments and buildings for its scenic beauty, architectural significance and country’s asset.
The Man Sagar urban lake is getting polluted by the inflow of sewage water and it proliferate the growth of water hyacinth and thus damaging the historical asset. To prevent the ecological damage in natural catchment with tourist attractions, need for conservation is necessary with buffer classifications. This will impose restrictions of the pouring of the sewage water into lake and help in achieving the objective of conservation and management in regard to ecological development and catering the tourist industry. Hawa Mahal is encroached nearby road and thus it is losing its scenic beauty, architectural design and historical importance of being windy palace. Similar conditions for the Jantar Mantar, which is located nearby road side, and facing pollution and public encroachments endangering its natural beauty and architectural design.
Buffering application and combining spatial information in GIS along with image interpretation of high resolution data for analysis will encourage step toward heritage conservation. This study describes the applicability of Geospatial approach towards heritage preservation and conservation (preventing damages, encroachments, and maintaining scenic beauty). These heritage are under the influence of environment and widely used during tourism and historical site seeing. The conservation strategies that can be applied on heritage building sites with the use of geospatial technology include many steps. Thus, it become necessary to map out the actual status of the heritage buildings using high spatial resolution data which make way to create spatial database using geospatial technology. The conservation strategies of the heritage using geospatial technology should include- Identification of the heritage site to be conserved (important analysis), and mapping spatial extent, evaluation of sites for its values, preservation status, and damage caused to it, establishing criteria, rule and legislation (buffer creation, restriction of commercial multi-storey apartment construction nearby site to preserve its historical scenic beauty) and carrying out reasonable preservation planning in its surroundings with effective monitoring for any encroachments in the defined buffer zones for implementing conservation strategies in the protected, prohibited and regulated area. Emerging technologies like Remote Sensing and GIS can be used in documentation and conservation of cultural heritage assets. These emerging technologies have valuable applications involved in conservation and management plans for cultural heritage assets.
These conservation strategies can be applied to all heritages which are susceptible to encroachment in future using high spatial resolution imagery.
Acknowledgment:
The authors are thankful to Ian Gilbert, Digital Globe Inc. Limited for providing the imagery to conduct the study. The authors are also thankful to vice chancellor BIT, Mesra for technical support to conduct the study.
References
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