ISAAC is a multi-disciplinary project aiming to valorise cultural assets as tourism resources through user-friendly and stakeholder-relevant e-services.

Tourism potentially is a key generator of the resources necessary to preserve and enhance cultural heritage in a sustainable way. ICT solutions, combined with the projected increases in bandwidth for both wired and wireless communication and new developments in data standards and web ontology languages (e.g. OWL) can help to create added value by providing better services. But successful implementation of the emerging technology depends on a high degree of cooperation across sectors, research disciplines and borders. The ISAAC project aims to pave the way towards more efficient use of ICT services in tourism by gathering the appropriate range of expertise needed to address this problem.

The project team seeks to develop a novel user-friendly and stakeholder-relevant ICT environment envisioned both as a distributed repository of intelligent cultural heritage content and as a software architecture enabling content interoperability (service-oriented) and content customised access and presentation (agent-oriented). Services provided via the web to European cultural destinations will support the tourism experience life cycle. One of these services will assume the form of a decision support system, integrating state-of-the-art multi-criteria analysis tools for policy makers.

The ISAAC IT-platform will integrate currently diverse and dispersed knowledge on cultural tourism and local heritage for the benefit of users willing to gain knowledge on European tourist destinations before, during or after a visit, and of citizens in their dual role of potential tourists and active part of the composition and promotion of the tourism offer in their community. Besides, it will support decision makers involved in the management of touristic offers and of the city as an attractive community, as well as other private or public stakeholders involved in activities linked with the cultural tourism market and destination promotion, such as attraction managers, travel agents, hoteliers, retailers, publishers or cities’ tourism offices.

As a result, a multi-stakeholder community for experiencing and managing European cultural heritage in urban cultural destinations will evolve.

To support inclusive governing and management of cultural tourism destinations, ISAAC will also develop an e-governance framework that will enable cities to assess the implications of strengthening ICT services in local cultural heritage attractions and improve urban decision- and policy-making.

ISAAC brings together researchers, ICT companies, city authorities and cultural institutions, pooling knowledge and experience in the fields of digital culture and heritage, e-tourism, cultural tourism management and urban e-governance.

For further information see http://www.isaac-project.eu.