Construction of China ’ s “ Large Ruins ” Monitoring System Based on the Comparative Analysis of World Cultural Heritage Monitoring — — An Example of the European-style Palace of the Old Summer Palace

The result of the comparative study on monitoring of culture heritage between China and the world shows that it is imperative for China to carry out Large Ruins monitoring. Some key questions that this paper will consider are: What should be monitored at Large Ruins? How do we build monitoring systems?To answer these questions, this paper, will use the Old Summer Palace ruins as an example and look at its design of monitoring systems and upcoming monitoring activities of its ruins. It will also consider how the Old Summer Palace makes a preliminary attempt to build a monitoring system for one of China’s “Large Ruins” by exploring the aspects of monitoring necessity, identification of monitoring targets, and building of monitoring system of the European-style Palace of the Old Summer Palace.


INTRODUCTION
At present, the heritage management system of mainland China has basically formed an architectural system of: "World heritage-Large ruins-national level cultural relics protection unitsmunicipality and county level key cultural relics protection units-other cultural relics protection units"."Large Ruins" is a heritage type only next to the world heritage.There is no clearly defined authorized and official definition of "Large Ruins", and there is also no corresponding name of "Dayizhi" (Large Ruins) outside of China.The first official definition of "Large Ruins" in China comes from the "Management Method of Special funds for the Protection of Large Ruins" promulgated by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.That is, "Large Ruins mainly include the relics, relics clusters, and cultural landscapes such as large scale human settlements, ancient city ruins, palaces, mausoleums and tombs, which reflect the historical and cultural information of various development stages of ancient history of China, including politics, military, science and technology, industry, agriculture, construction, transportation, water conservancy, etc., and are featured with grand scale, high value, and with far-reaching influence."(Ministry of Finance, State Administration of Cultural Heritage, 2005) Regulatory agencies and academic circles have reached preliminary consensus on the definition of world cultural heritage monitoring, namely, "monitoring is one of the major important methods for world heritage protection and management, and is the most basic and effective protection means for maintaining heritage safety (World Heritage Division of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, 2007).However, monitoring of Large Ruins has long been a controversial topic and the focus of the controversy is whether it is necessary to monitor the Large Ruins.If yes, what will be the content of monitoring and how do we build a Large Ruins monitoring system?Based on the world cultural heritage monitoring activities carried out in China, this paper, by taking the monitoring system of the European-style Palaces of the Old Summer Palace as an example, one of around 150 Large Ruins in China, makes an attempt to answer the above questions.

ANALYSIS ON THE NECESSARITY OF LARGE RUINS MONITORING
Why it is necessary to monitor Large Ruins?The answer can be worked out by comparing the monitoring of world cultural heritage.The reasons for monitoring world cultural heritage are as follows.Firstly, it is of significant value.Secondly, the World Heritage Committee requires conducting heritage monitoring.Finally, it is an intrinsic requirement of world cultural heritage for their protection, management and exhibition.Here we examine whether we should also monitor Large Ruins based on the above mentioned aspects.

Value Reference of World Cultural Heritages
The "  Jing Feng, 1996).By comparing the definitions between "Large Ruins" and world cultural heritage, it is found that the later is listed in the "World Heritage List" for special protection due to its outstanding universal value, but the former has no such laurels.However, both have the same significance in inheriting Chinese culture.Large Ruins such as the Old Summer Palace Ruins, Sanxingdui Ruins, and Bohai Kingdom Ruins, can be described as "grand scale, high value, and with far-reaching influence" and are no worse than world cultural heritage in terms of their value to Chinese culture.We should not pay less attention to them since they are not recognized by the people from other countries.
In fact, there is no impassable gulf between Large Ruins and world cultural heritage.Among the about 150 Large Ruins nominated during the "12 th Five Year" period in China, 8 are world cultural heritage sites; and among the "World Cultural Heritage Preliminary List", these sites are Large Ruins.
Today's Large Ruins are likely to be the world cultural heritage of tomorrow.Thus it is questionable for the decisions on which heritage needs to be monitored and which don't purely based on their grade rather than from the perspectives of their value and cultural connotation.

References on Monitoring History of World Cultural Heritage
From the practice of both China and internationally, the course of world cultural heritage monitoring was never smooth sailing, and there is a lot of literature focusing on this topic (Herb Stovel, 2004;Herman Van Hooff, 2004).From the literature review , it can be seen that the heritage monitoring we are referring to started from the heritage reporting system established by the World Heritage Committee.The 1994 World Heritage Committee Conference required its member countries to submit a scientific report on the status of world heritage protection in their countries, but member countries asked the World Heritage Committee to provide a legal basis for submitting the report.Meanwhile, it is necessary to exchange ideas with world cultural heritage sites and international organizations for the protection of cultural relics and to form internal and external driving mechanisms, so as to realize the comprehensive construction of large ruins monitoring systems.

References on Monitoring Content of World Cultural Heritage
There is no unified standard on the contents of world cultural heritage monitoring both at home and abroad., 2006).However, at the operational level, this method is still an instructive document, and there is still no unified guideline on the specific content to be monitored.The "National World Cultural Heritage Monitoring Working Conference" held in 2007 focused their discussion on the "World Cultural Heritage Monitoring Rules (draft for solicitation of opinions)" compiled by ICOMOS CHINA, and proposed revising their opinions.These rules were later revised and became the "Implementation Guideline for World Cultural Heritage Monitoring in China(Provisional)".Because of the diversity of world cultural heritage, this guideline was, eventually, not released due to the lack of a unified standard.However, the monitoring contents reflected in the guideline could be taken as an analytical basis for the necessity of conducting large ruins monitoring.From table 1, regarding monitoring contents of world cultural heritages, it can be observed that the only difference between large ruins monitoring and world cultural heritage is the classification of monitoring targets.According to the definition of large ruins, it mainly includes two types: ancient sites and ancient tombs.Although the contents of ancient buildings, ancient sites, ancient tombs, grottoes and carved stones, historical and cultural towns and villages and historical streets as well as cultural landscapes are more abundant, it cannot be taken as the reason for monitoring world cultural heritage rather than monitoring Large Ruins.

The Old Summer Palace makes its monitoring a significant means to protect its outstanding values.
It is well-known that Old Summer Palace has special significance both at home and abroad, and it is a true description of relationship between China and the Western world, especially the European-style Palace, reflecting a combination of Chinese and Western elements in landscape architecture art.

There are a variety of threats in the Europeanstyle Palace area, the development of which needs real time monitoring.
After site investigation, existing threats of the Europeanstyle Palace area include cracking, deformation, development of fractures, weathering, crumbling, plant aggression, pollutants, erosion due to rain and snow, damage by tourists, and so on.Influential factors, most of which come from environmental an d human behaviour, reflect themselves on the sites in the form of various threats.Combined effects of factors such as rainwate r, moisture, change of temperature and exposure to sunlight ind uces an accelerated development of the stone material intrinsic joint, which is embodied as accelerated development of stone material intrinsic joint, weathering, crumbling, and so on.

Protection and exhibition of the European-style Palace area lacks support.
Both the government administrative departments and experts believe that the European-style Palace area needs to implement protection and exhibition projects as soon as possible, but they also hold the view that earlier stage monitoring data is required before the implementation of related projects.The monitoring of European-style Palace area This hard problem can be solved by monitoring European-style Palace.

Key points regarding the monitoring of the Europeanstyle Palace area in the Old Summer Palace
The purpose of identifying and monitoring key points of the European-style Palace area is to meet the requirement of threat monitoring, protection, and management.Monitoring should not only focus on threats reflected at the site, such as the above mentioned threats (table 2), but also on the influential factors behind the threats, such as change of temperature, sun light exposure, foundation settlement, tourist behaviour, and so on, so as to accumulate and identify early warning signs, and to provide complete data support for future protection.
Within the structure of the information collection system (monitoring) and the design of software, the monitoring system is divided into four modules: the main structure, environment, spatial position of remaining components, and tourist behaviour.
Among which, the "main structure" monitoring refers to the "main structure" in a broad sense, not only including the monitoring of threats on the sites, such as cracks, inclination, weathering, but also including micro environmental factors directly causing these problems, such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, vibration, and foundation settlement.The data provided by the local area environment monitoring and wider area environment monitoring reflects the changing situation of the macro-environment, but the situation of the European-style Palace site is complicated.
The difference in the local microenvironment is an outcome of the change of the macro-environment but may not be consistent with it.Thus it could be formed due to the green shade and site shade at the location of the main structure of the site, which serves as the most direct influential factor of the threats of the site.The purpose of monitoring the microenvironment is, therefore, to identify such direct influential factors.The change of the microenvironment is one of the most direct indicators of preventive protection.
Environment monitoring is divided into two parts: one is local environment monitoring within the enclosure of the European-style Palace scenic region; the other one is the environment monitoring of the area outside the enclosure, a wider area within Haidian District.The former use of the monitors installed in the European-style Palace area of the Old Summer Palace is to collect data, including indicators such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, total radiation of sunlight, noise, and water level.The later use directly obtain related data for Haidian District, including indicators such as temperature, humidity, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, total radiation of sunlight, and air mass.
Spatial location monitoring of the remaining components, namely monitoring of site distribution, is to monitor the spatial distribution of the remaining components.Currently, the features of the parcel of land outside the enclosure of the European-style Palace is in good control, so more effort shall be made to the monitoring of the spatial distribution of the cultural relics within the site area, namely the monitoring of the relative location of various cultural relics within the site, so as to prevent the free movement of the cultural relics.It is difficult for pure unmanned aerial photography to get all the required information.Additionally, the workload of manual inspection is too huge, and it is difficult to use the macro perspective to preserve the image.Therefore, the monitoring of the spatial distribution of the remaining components of the project combines manual inspection with unmanned aerial photography.
Tourist behaviour turns out to be the most important influential factor of the preservation of the European-style Palace site.Although this influence is accidental, the damage caused by it is permanent.Currently, the Management Office of the European-style Palace site in the Old Summer Palace is compiling the "Project Plan for the Protection and Exhibition of the European-style Palace Site".The site will be separated from tourists so as to decrease or avoid serious damage caused by tourist behaviour.In order to examine the effect of the protection and exhibition project, it is proper to conduct simultaneous monitoring, so as to make a joint analysis on tourist behaviour, major structures, and the environment.At present, there are only a few monitoring facilities in the European-style Palace area, and they are not systematically established.Furthermore, there is no plan for the establishment of tourist monitoring and security and protection systems during the implementation period of the project.In order to ensure the completeness of monitoring, the project, without increasing costs, is to add a few monitors to monitor the behaviour of tourists.

Combination between instrument monitoring and manual monitoring
Since the cultural relics of the European-style Palace site is both a patriotic site as well as a national archaeological site and is extremely valuable, thus there is a very high requirement on preservation of cultural relics and on tourist visiting the site.From the perspective of preservation of cultural relics, the layout of monitoring facilities should not damage cultural relics and their surrounding environment, so the number of monitoring instruments should be limited.From the perspective of tourist visiting the site, too many monitors may affect the landscape feature.For this reason, it is suggested to use a balanced combination between instrument monitoring and manual monitoring to build the monitoring system of the European-style Palace site.By sticking to the principle of minimal intervention and appropriate monitoring, the monitoring shall focus on the locations of key threats.

Integration between this project and the world cultural heritage monitoring and early warning system
Related departments are compiling indicator design for the monitoring and early-warning system for world cultural heritage.Although the European-style Palace in the Old Summer Palace is not a world cultural heritage, its monitoring system should be designed in accordance with world class standards.Meanwhile, as a large ruin, the European-style Palace in the Old Summer Palace has its own special features, which should be specially considered during the system design.The experience of the monitoring and early warning system of world cultural heritage could be borrowed but not be indiscriminately copied.
Currently, the existing world cultural heritage monitoring and early warning systems are divided into indicator types of influential factors, protection and management behaviour, security assurance, main structure factors, and so on, which have great reference value for this project.However, among problems faced by the European-style Palace in the Old Summer Palace site, there is an urgent need to provide data support to the monitoring of the preservation conditions of the main structure and of the conditions of threat development, thus a solution can be developed.The project, as a pilot project of the overall Old Summer Palace dynamic information and monitoring and early warning system, firstly focuses on solving the most urgent problems.The overall system should be improved and perfected in the future.

Network layout and monitoring center
In order to avoid disturbing the site by laying network cables, all of the data transmission of this project uses a 4G network.Construction of the 4G network mainly makes use of of world cultural heritage sites are not sufficient, but we believe, along with the implementation of large ruins monitoring, the monitoring work will be further improved.

Dynamic
Monitoring Information and Early-warning System o the Old Summer Palace ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume II-5/W3, 2015 25th International CIPA Symposium 2015, 31 August -04 September 2015, Taipei, Taiwan This contribution has been peer-reviewed.The double-blind peer-review was conducted on the basis of the full paper.doi:10.5194/isprsannals-II-5-W3-171-2015 In recent years, protection and management organizations for 25 world cultural heritage sites and 4 world cultural and natural heritage sites at all levels in China have launched their monitoring operations, and some have established special monitoring units.For example, Suzhou City has established the World Heritage Monitoring Center in 2005.(WorldHeritage Division of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, 2007b) However, we can also find that, the establishment of the above mentioned heritage site monitoring systems is the outcome of external pressure such as the "Measures" and "Rules" promulgated by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.inDunhuang in November, discussing the "World Cultural Heritage Monitoring Rules (draft for solicitation of opinions).A series of such methods and rules have facilitated world heritage sites to start to establish monitoring systems.Obviously, it is external pressure both from home and abroad that serves as the important factors for heritage sites of China to carry out monitoring activities.It can be seen from the above mentioned analysis that whereas internal needs for influencing heritage itself and monitoring preservation environment are not the major driving force for the construction of monitoring system., external forces such as the World Cultural Heritage Committee, State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and other international cultural heritage protection organizations are the major determinants for China to carry out monitoring activities on world heritage sites.By the same token, large ruins monitoring also needs pressure from external forces, because without the attention of international organizations, most of this kind of force would come from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
site monitoring in China with best practices.From simply guarding the site at the early period of the foundation of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), to the establishment of meteorological stations, to monitoring of the internal and external environment of few caves, and to the current long-term and stable monitoring system formed by cooperation with international research institutions, this site has experienced 50 years of development.Just as Fan Jinshi, President of the Dunhuang Academy said, it "experienced a course from nonexistence to existence, from simple to complex, from intuitive judgement to systematic monitoring, and from passive monitoring to active monitoring" (World Heritage Division of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, 2007a).The State Administration of Cultural Heritage promulgated the "World Cultural Heritage Protection and Management Measures" in November 2006, and it formulated, in accordance with the "Measure", the "China World Cultural Heritage Expert Advisory Management Principles" and the "China World Cultural Heritage Monitoring and Checking Principles" in 2007.In the same year, China held the World Cultural Heritage Monitoring Conference Threats and Influential Factors of the European-style Palace in the Old Summer Palace