Promoting heritage through a pervasive and mobile computing approach: the case of the portuguese city of Mirandela

Promoting heritage is a challenge for all generations. The heritage is a legacy that we inherit from our ancestors and that we should deliver to our decedents. In this sense, the first steep that we should take, after preserve the heritage, is to develop solutions that enable effective and democratic ways to promote it. This promotion starts with the ability that of those who visit this heritage be able to know and enjoy it. Information and Communication Technologies and specifically Pervasive and Mobile Computing represents nowadays a big opportunity to develop innovative solutions capable to inform tourists about heritage and even enable them to experience past realities related to immaterial heritage like ancestral legends, past events and even no longer existing physical patrimony. This paper starts to make a reflection and the evolution the Information and Communication Technologies role on tourism and present a technological architecture to respond to the challenge of promote heritage and inform tourist in their travel experiences. After that, the paper presents also a developed prototype created to the Portuguese City of Mirandela capable to promote its historical and gastronomic heritage and also support the tours of the tourists through its territory. Finally, there are made some remarks about the future growing and directions for technology applied to tourism.UNIAG, R&D unit funded by the FCT - Portuguese Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education. UID/GES/4752/2016.