Cultural heritage assessment and vulnerability using Analytic Hierarchy Process and Geographic Information Systems (Valea Oii catchment, North-eastern Romania). An approach to historical maps

The paper presents a method for determining the vulnerability of the landscape that can be applied to cultural heritage sites assessment, based on spatial data gathered from historical maps over a time span of 118 years (1894-2012) and integrated into GIS. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed in order to prioritise the natural and anthropogenic elements extracted from historical maps and orthophotos in order to produce the vulnerability maps and being able to assess and mitigate the effects on cultural heritage sites. In this case, the consistency ratio (CR) has a value of 0.06, which means that the pairwise comparison matrix has an acceptable consistency. The final vulnerability maps for Valea Oii catchment, North-eastern Romania, divided into four vulnerability classes (low, medium, high, and very high), will highlight the most vulnerable areas in terms of natural and anthropogenic elements and will be a powerful tool in the future development plans for the area.