Cultural Routes, supported by the European Council, are being viewed as historical lines interconnecting two or more regions and are organized around a topic whose historical, artistic or social interest proves to be European, either because of the geographical layout of the route, or due to its contents and significance. The CERTESS project aims to address some of the key challenges of Cultural Routes in Europe by establishing a common European Reference Model that can help to achieve the EU 2020 targets in cultural tourism, aiming at sustainable and competitive sectors and territories.

Currently most of the European Cultural Routes lack comprehensive methodologies, adequate governance instruments and innovative approaches to implement effective strategies at regional and EU level. ICT solutions to make cultural heritage more tangible to the diverse users are also not evident. In fact, there are often a range of local initiatives that are casually scattered along the route and its territory, thus lacking the critical mass to valorise the value of cultural heritage and tourism performance remaining poor. CERTESS aims to fill up this gap and provide a coherent methodological framework about developing, managing, and enhancing European Cultural Routes by utilizing a common Reference Model and Governance instruments fostering sustainable and competitive cultural tourism. This involves the development of innovative management tools as well as research on successful, collaborative networking, and cooperation structures that can boost the process. Involving integrated ICT technologies to provide competitive services and products is another objective of the project.

CERTESS is carried out by the European Institute of Cultural Routes together with eleven other partners from Europe representing city and regional authorities, tourist agencies, and research institutions. The Institute of Technology Assessment and System Analysis (ITAS) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is one of the research institutions, acting as a scientific advisor to the consortium. ITAS’ role is to identify innovative and effective governance instruments and tools to improve the Cultural Routes management not only on the national but also on the EU level. ITAS also supports the development of governance strategies and policies to aid efforts on stakeholder engagement and support the project’s objective of establishing a consistent alignment of European Cultural Routes and sustainable cultural tourism. In this, the adoption of integrated ICT tools and services is of particular interest.

If you have queries about CERTESS or the work of the ITAS team, please let us know. We are particularly interested in issues related to regional innovation, cultural heritage as a driver of sustainable tourism, innovation governance, and the use of ICT to enhance heritage use and its safeguard.

Project website: http://certess.culture-routes.lu

Information: PDF

Further informationen (PDF).

Issue 1 (June 2012)
Issue 2 (December 2012)
Issue 3 (June 2013)
Issue 4 (December 2013)
Issue 5 (June 2014)
Issue 6 (November 2014)