Digital Storytelling: The Integration of Intangible and Tangible Heritage in the City of Surat, India

The impact of digital technologies to the domain of cultural heritage has increased the speed and automation of the processes and practices that involve processing and presentation of digital heritage data. Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) and Virtual Reality (VR) can play a key role towards the conservation, preservation, and management of architectural heritage. This includes the preservation of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage at multiple levels. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of digital storytelling through digital technologies by integrating intangible data and information to the tangible heritage in the scan-to-BIM process. The paper builds on few works that have begun to investigate the classification of intangible qualitative heritage data within a BIM and VR context for heritage assets. This exploration demonstrates that the incorporation of both qualitative and quantitative information about a heritage-built asset has value in the (re)interpretation, documentation and preservation of cultural heritage. The development of HBIM and VR in this paper is to bring together heterogeneous data that has the potential to provide a model for future work in the field of heritage conservation and digital technologies. The city of Surat is used as a case study for exploring the potential of digital storytelling for the city’s urban heritage. Indeed, this holistic integration can enhance the awareness of urban cultural heritage to support the processes of local urban heritage conservation for key stakeholders such as local Government, heritage conservation experts, urban planners and local communities.