The rapid development of digital technologies provides important opportunities for more effective cultural heritage conservation and management. While the concept of cultural landscape has been accepted by the academic community in the cultural heritage field for many years, the digital conservation of cultural landscapes still lacks pragmatic guidance. The aim of this article is to explore an approach for building a digital information system to support cultural landscape conservation and management. The Slender West Lake scenic area, a typical cultural landscape in China, was used as an instrumental case study. A geo-database was designed and established to integrate the information of the natural, cultural, tangible and intangible landscape features of Slender West Lake. The digital information system for cultural landscapes provides a more holistic, dynamic and specific cultural perspective on heritage for landscape conservators. The system provides comprehensive information support for heritage conservation, management and interpretation, which are not achievable with conventional tools. This article has expanded the cultural heritage theory by presenting a practical guide for the digital information management of cultural landscapes. The workflow for building a cultural landscape geo-database can be used as a reference for heritage projects in China and other countries.

The Rockery is often a key element of a Classical Chinese Garden. It’s exquisite detailed physical characteristics a major contributor to artistic value, aesthetic appeal, and the carrier of historical and cultural heritage values. Poets and scholars have often described the beauty of these places in classical gardens in qualitative terms but lacked the quantitative tools to provide replicable metric descriptions. The highly complex forms and surfaces, irregularity, and fragility of garden rockeries has challenged authors to accurately describe the characteristics of these qualities using traditional methods and tools. This article presents a new method of digital characterization approach based on laser scanning and point cloud visualization, which can quantitatively detect and represent the pattern of rockery surface textures. It offers a replicable accurate quantitative descriptor of the Classical Chinese rockery. The Small-Rock Mountain Retreat, a nationally protected rockery garden in China, has been used as a case study. It contains original historic elements and more recently restored areas. Two characteristics of rockery surfaces, including the well-proportioned density and space, and the proper contrast between solid and void, were analyzed by examining four attributes: (1) surface complexity; (2) contour curvature; (3) shape variation; and (4) the interweaving of lightness and darkness. The findings demonstrate that, despite some similarities between the restored portion of the rockery and the historical remnants, there are variances in the richness of the details and the balanced distribution of shape change. The digital characterization approach introduced in this article offers a new perspective for recording and in turn safeguarding Chinese garden rockeries and other irregular cultural heritage objects.

Although the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme has great potential for addressing the Sustainable Development Goals, it faces a continual lack of on-the-ground community-level tools. This paper explores the potential for community-level intervention to guide the evolution of rural landscapes under the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme. This community-level intervention comprises three phases (knowledge coproduction, perspective planning and community action) and nine stages (village representative assembly, internalising knowledge workshop, field trip and casual interviews, knowledge demonstration, joint fieldwork, perspective discussions, tangible landscape element design, intangible landscape element coordination, and effectiveness evaluation). Our case study, Dragon Tail Village, reveals that community-level interveners should facilitate community development by recognising the important role of rural communities—co-owners of heritage sites—and rural landscapes—sets of attributes with heritage value. Our findings therefore improve the understanding of the World Heritage Sustainable Tourism Programme’s driving rationale for community development.

With the repaid development of Building Information Modelling (BIM), many scholars began to explore the BIM-adaption in landscape field. Landscape Information Modelling (LIM) is the corresponding concept created and used in landscape architecture discipline. However, cultural landscape heritage, as a special cultural heritage category, have specific objectives, principles and methodologies in conservation and management. It is necessary to explore an integrated information framework to facilitate the digital management of cultural landscape information. The aim of this paper is to explore an integrated information framework, which I call a ‘Heritage Landscape Information Model (HLIM)’, to facilitate cultural landscape heritage practices in China. This research examined the Digital Scenic Area project as instrumental case studies to identify the main components for a HLIM. As the two major components of cultural landscape heritage, both the physical features and the non-physical landscapes experiences were identified in this paper. The large amount of intangible heritage aspects indicated the significant differences between a HLIM and a BIM. Accordingly, a conceptual framework to represent ‘cultural experiences’ was identified with certain categories of landscape features and attributes. In terms of technologies, firstly, this research revealed that virtual reality was the most prioritised tool used in the current landscape conservation practices in China. Secondly, the other required system includes landscape-monitoring tools and the automation office work. Lastly, a HLIM also needs to contain a special information platform for cultural and historical information. The components identified in this paper could potentially contribute to an integrated conceptual framework of HLIM in China. The conclusion identified several implications for technology development.

In 2015, the Study of Xi’an Historic Walled City Regeneration Strategy applied the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) Approach through experimenting and testing digital technologies following recommended action steps of HUL Approach. Within the context of urbanisation and heritage deterioration happened past decades in Chinese cities, this paper proposes an innovative HUL Information System that can be used to integrate the approach and technical support measures. This enables comprehensive identification of spatial–temporal relativity of urban landscape morphology, linking between the past and present. The use of spatial digital tools such as aerial photo modeling, geographic information system analysis, and space syntax is explored to trace the continuity of the historical landscape in the built environment. The research team uncovered the context of Xi’an’s cultural and historical landscape through historical literature and related studies over past decades, and summarised and obtained a spatial data set for the dominant historical landscape pattern of the walled city area. Compared with the existing spatial pattern identified by digital tools, the findings showed similarity with historical landscape patterns, including part of a fengshui landform, the 17th to 19th century water system, and an evolving community habitat. This could be explained by the literature and academic research, which demonstrates the influence of historic landscape system in urban evolution. This research aims to show the potential of the HUL Information System as a technical support for urban conservation in Chinese cities, particularly with regard to mapping resources, which is fundamental toward other relevant steps in the HUL approach.