A Web-based System for Cultural Heritage Exploitation

Cultural heritage exploitation and valorisation of a geographical area are fundamental aspects that any tourist organisation has to take into account in order to answer better to users demand. Furthermore, the growing up of the Internet and World Wide Web induced both private and public organisations to present information in a hypermedia way. The present paper describes the characteristics and the architecture of a system that encourages and exploits cultural heritage (and tourist supply) resources in an integrate manner. The system provides innovative and not traditional functionality as the “Intelligent Tour Design” (ITD) based on users needs and/or preferences, or the “shortest path computing”. In Particular, ITD, starting from user inputs allows to select a set of candidates sites and to arrange them into an “optimal” sequence, meeting user input (e.g. religious and archaeological sites) and “environment” constraints, like opening time windows for entities. Besides it allows to organise tourism information in a multimedia and multilingual form together with cartographic information, available through internet, in an user-friendly way, using a traditional Web browser (without plug-in or ActiveX control) providing, through a simple user interface, a wide and rich range of tourism information about Cultural Heritages, Events, Hotels, etc.