A standardized digital recording framework for AlUla's rock-cut monuments creates a documented baseline for heritage condition assessment, monitoring, and impact assessment.
AlUla in northwestern Saudi Arabia holds an exceptional concentration of rock-cut heritage, including monumental tombs, sculptural façades, and carved niches in sandstone. Weathering, erosion, and growing tourism are changing these monuments, yet impact assessment and monitoring can only measure change against an accurate baseline. This paper looks back to architectural recording, a long-established heritage practice, as a foundation for assessing and managing future impacts.
We propose a digital architectural recording framework applied to representative rock-cut sites. High-resolution photography, field measurements, and computer-aided drafting produce standardized front and side elevations, plans, sections, and three-dimensional isometric drawings. These records capture each monument's geometry, spatial organization, and morphological features and form a permanent digital archive.
The archive supports condition assessment, conservation planning, and long-term monitoring, so that future change from erosion or tourism pressure can be identified and judged against a documented starting point. It also provides a base for GIS, heritage building information modelling, 3D reconstruction, and AI-based analysis.
The AlUla case study shows how standardized documentation can serve as a scalable, transferable baseline for protecting rock-cut landscapes across the Arabian Peninsula and other arid regions, linking heritage recording with impact assessment practice.
Mariam Hany studies Computer Science at Ain Shams University, Cairo, and works on digital documentation and AI-supported tools for cultural heritage conservation.