An Application of the AHP in Cultural Heritage Conservation Strategy for China

How to establish a comprehensive conservation strategy for China’s cultural heritage conservation has not yet been paid attention. Nowadays cultural heritage conservation involves more and more factors and gradually turns into a complex multi-criteria decision problem, which brings many difficulties to strategy-making. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) can be very useful in reaching a likely result which can satisfy the decision makers. With the help of the foundation funded by the Ministry of Education and the State Archives Administration of China, this paper is intended to investigate the feasibility of applying the AHP in cultural heritage conservation to improve the decision making with a more systematic and logical approach. First, the important criteria and alternatives for cultural heritage conservation were identified. These criteria and alternatives were used to formulate an AHP-based model to represent the strategy making aspects. Then the AHP-based model was analyzed, and finally some conclusions were obtained, such as “ restoration technology is emergent ” , “ technological application is important”,etc Key words: cultural heritage, conservation strategy, AHP Resume: Comment etablir une strategie globale de conservation pour l’heritage culturel chinois n’a pas fait l’objet d’une grande attention. Aujourd’hui, la conservation de l’heritage culturel comprend de plus en plus de facteurs et devient progressivement un probleme de decision complexe a multi-criteres qui entraine beaucoup de difficultes pour la prise de strategie. Le Processus de la hierarchie analytique (Analytic Hierarchy Process/AHP) est tres utile pour chercher un resultat qui pourrait satisfaire ceux qui prennent la decision. Avec l’aide de la fondation financee par le ministere de l’Education et l’Administration nationale des archives de la Chine, cet article essaie d’etudier la feasibilite d’appliquer l’AHP a la conservation de l’heritage culturel de sorte a faciliter la prise de decision avec une approche plus systematique et logique. Tout d’abord, les criteres et alternatives importants pour la conservation de l’heritage culturel etaient identifies. Ils etaient utilises pour formuler un modele base sur l’AHP dans le but de representer les aspects de la prise de strategie. Ensuite, ce modele etait analyse, et finalement on obtenait des conclusions, comme « la restauration technologique est emergente », « l’application de la technologie est importante » etc. Mots-Cles: heritage culturel, strategie de la conservation, AHP