Monitoring serial transnational World Heritage – the Central Asian Silk Roads experience

The last decade has seen a steady increase in the number of cultural World Heritage serial transnational nominations. For this concept of heritage, new approaches and tools are required beyond those used for traditional site management. This paper focuses on the monitoring tool and methodologies developed for the Silk Roads serial transnational World Heritage nomination in Central Asia. A monitoring tool was developed to document the state of conservation and possible threats to the Outstanding Universal Value based on a risk management approach. It was implemented as web-based Geospatial Content Management System, following international documentation standards and methodologies. The first Silk Roads World Heritage property was listed in 2014 and more are under preparation.