A quantitative description of the spatial–temporal distribution and evolution pattern of world cultural heritage

Abstract Depicting the temporal and spatial evolution pattern of global world cultural heritage systematically and finely is the basis of heritage recognition and protection. In this study, 869 world cultural heritage inscriptions (through 2019) were selected as the research objects, and the times and types of each World Heritage site were manually annotated from more than 5000 pieces of data. Through time series modelling, the advantages of and changes in heritage declarations in different regions and periods were analysed, and the impact of heritage strategy on the number of heritage sites included in each region was evaluated. The results showed that the implementation of heritage policy greatly impacted each region, especially on the number of heritage sites in Asia and the Pacific region. Using the heritage era to carry out modelling analysis, from the perspective of the integrity of historical heritage cultural types, it is considered that there may be cultural heritage sites in the Caribbean and Latin America that have not been given enough attention. The modelling analysis results of era attributes can support the fairness of heritage determination. By calculating the frequency and peak value of heritage sites at the national scale, the frequency and peak value of each country in the top 10 list are used to characterize the ability of national declarations of cultural heritage and reveal the differences in the ability of each member country to declare heritage sites and the heritage era. By calculating the distribution density of the heritage era, this study finds that the world’s cultural heritage is not concentrated in the Middle Ages (600–1450) but the periods of Reformation and Exploration (1450–1700) and Progress and Empire (1850–1914). The above analysis shows that there are imbalances and strategic adjustment effects concerning regions, countries, eras and types in World Heritage list development. The composition types of heritage are complex, and the combination types have obvious changes in different periods. It is suggested that the strategy of world cultural heritage collection should be further optimized to fully guarantee the balance of regions, countries and types, and the heritage value should be fully considered in heritage protection with more diversity and complexity of types.