From Smart Cities to Smart Buildings—Tools for Promoting Cultural Heritage

Abstract

Changing Europe to be smart, sustainable and inclusive, able to generate and manage high employment levels, productivity, and cohesion is a still goal which is hard to attain which launches several challenges in the field of growth. With a background of deep structural changes, and also some extremely favorable developments, the tourism industry has turned into a sector playing a decisive role in attaining Europe 2020 goals. Cultural heritage is a fundamental resource of sustainable development, but also a basic factor for differentiating the touristic products. In this respect, we can notice that cultural heritage has as a background the need of integrating the touristic resource (natural and cultural) within the local community, but also the need to avoid that this process would lead to alteration, deterioration or even loss of the cultural heritage. The attractiveness of a tourist destination depends on the degree to which it succeeds in satisfying demand. In this context, the role of cultural heritage is defining, due to its uniqueness, and to the multitude of individualized possibilities in some of its complex packages, based on natural resources, cultural–historical heritage, personalized services, etc. Cultural heritage, especially for low-income communities, represents an important asset and a significant source of finance for local budgets. Promoting smart buildings on the internet and creating digital access solution for them, may lead to a new understanding in the public administration of smart cities. Our chapter aims to point out the opportunities emerging for small communities in the cultural heritage management area.