[Paper Review] Dynamic Map-based Data-Centric Approach for Tourism and Cultural Heritage Preservation Digital Twins

Falcão, João Spínola, Hohlenwerger, João G. Perrone+4 more|SPIRE - Sciences Po Institutional REpository|Feb 13, 2026

3D Surveying and Cultural Heritage0 citations

TL;DR

Proposes a QGIS-based, data-centric digital twin framework for managing tourism and cultural heritage in smart cities, demonstrated on Salvador’s Pelourinho Historic Center, integrating IoT, social, and heritage data for real-time monitoring and scenario analysis.

ABSTRACT

Tourism is an essential and growing economic activity worldwide, bringing benefits such as job creation, revenue generation, and tax revenue, and driving economic prosperity. Tourism activities may also have negative impacts on cities, including overtourism and pressure on housing and real estate markets. Cultural heritage is an essential asset of cities and countries that must be preserved. Cultural heritage, as an asset, is commonly explored through tourism activities and may have negative impacts, including physical degradation, commodification, and loss of authenticity. A digital twin is a data-driven virtual representation of a physical object, system, or environment. However, although digital twin technology has been widely adopted in manufacturing, Industry 4.0, and urban planning for smart cities, there remains a gap in specialized digital twins for tourism and cultural heritage management. This paper proposes a QGIS-based, data-centric approach to digital twin frameworks that supports the management, development, and deployment of tourism and cultural heritage services and applications in smart cities. The data-centric approach is embedded in a specialized digital twin focusing on the Salvador Historic Center - Pelourinho, a highly important cultural asset and tourism spot for the city of Salvador. Currently, Pelourinho faces a persistent challenge in sustaining tourism flux while safeguarding its cultural and heritage assets. Preliminary results indicate that the data-centric approach adopted by Pelourinho's DT facilitates data visualization, integrates data silos, and adequately supports management, enabling managers to address heritage preservation and conservation issues, control over-tourism, and implement urban resilience and climate adaptation measures.

Motivation & Objective

• Address the gap in specialized digital twins for tourism and cultural heritage management.
• Develop a data-centric, QGIS-based digital twin architecture for Pelourinho that integrates heterogeneous data sources.
• Enable real-time monitoring, scenario simulation, and predictive maintenance for heritage preservation and tourism management.
• Demonstrate how data centralization supports decision-making for urban resilience and climate adaptation.

Proposed method

• Adopts a data-centric approach where data quality and quantity are central to the architecture.
• Uses a PostgreSQL with PostGIS backend to store and manage diverse time-series, georeferenced data.
• Maps IoT and other data into QGIS layers via a database-to-QGIS mapping approach.
• Implements a Service-Specific Data Processing and Analytics (SSDPA) module for spatial SQL queries and views.
• Develops a five-layer DT architecture (physical world, Data Hub, analytical models, simulation core, visualization).
• Applies AI-enabled data processing and scenario simulation to analyze tourism flux and environmental impacts.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 Can a data-rich, GIS-based digital twin holistically address tourism flux, cultural heritage preservation, and social well-being in a smart city context?
• RQ2 How can heterogeneous data sources be integrated and georeferenced to support management decisions for heritage sites like Pelourinho?
• RQ3 What is the role of a data-centric architecture in enabling real-time monitoring, predictive analyses, and scenario planning for urban heritage management?

Key findings

• A data-centric DT enables visualization and integration of data silos to support heritage preservation and over-tourism mitigation.
• The Pelourinho DT can monitor tourist flux, identify congestion hotspots, simulate tourism scenarios, and assess environmental impacts.
• The architecture centralizes data through a Data Hub, enabling consistent spatial-temporal analyses and scalable visualization.
• Dynamic maps and dashboards support decision-making for urban management, tourism planning, and preservation strategies.