Sustainable Tourism Through Technology: Georgia Tech's Digital Solution to Historic Preservation

- by Benjamin Wright -

Destination tourism has now matched or surpassed pre-Covid levels in many parts of the world. It’s leading to challenges as operators and local governments try to walk the line between inviting visitors and preserving the places tourists want to visit so they can be enjoyed and studied for years to come. The more people who visit a site, the greater the risk of damage from foot traffic and contact with walls and artifacts. Even human breath in enclosed spaces can inflict as much damage as pollution from vehicles.

Enter Associate Professor Danielle Willkens from Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture in the College of Design. Willkens, who is the Sustainable Tourism co-lead for the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS), is using technology to assess historic sites and develop strategies to mitigate damage caused by visitors and the development that frequently occurs when a site becomes popular.

“At a foundational level, a lot of what we do is related to survey work,” explains Willkens. “We are using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), or lasers, to get very high-resolution, three-dimensional images. We end up with a digital record that serves as a snapshot of a building or space at one moment in time, and it becomes invaluable for preservation and rehabilitation planning.”

The advantage of using LiDAR is that it is what Willkens calls a “non-contact invasive” method. It doesn’t damage the structure but can reveal existing weaknesses and flaws that need attention. In a matter of a few days, their process can reveal what could take weeks or months of visual inspection to uncover.

In addition to traveling abroad to examine sites in the Dominican Republic and the famous site of Petra in Jordan, Willkens uses her tools to help protect and preserve places that have played an important role in American civil rights history: W.E.B. Du Bois’ office in Fountain Hall at Morris Brown College, the Penn Center on Saint Helena Island in South Carolina, and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. She is also working with the National Park Service to evaluate the MLK corridor in Atlanta and has projects in historic neighborhoods like Mechanicsville and Pittsburgh.

Where does Willkens’ passion for protecting these places come from?

“I'm the daughter of an educator and two generations of educators beyond that,” she says. “I come from a line of people who are invested in teaching and advocacy — people who love travel and museums and appreciate the power of place.”

One successful project that Willkens is particularly proud of is a scan of the USS Drum, a World War II submarine on display at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile, Alabama. By recreating the interior of the submarine digitally, access has been granted to people who cannot visit the ship in person due to mobility limitations, claustrophobia, or distance. The project was launched on Veterans Day of 2024. Since then, 97-year-old Bill Lister, who is the last surviving member of the Drum’s crew, has visited the ship many times from the comfort of his home in Indiana.

A similar project is part of a partnership with Auburn University in which Willkens and her colleagues are developing a digital conflict map of the March 7, 1965, “Bloody Sunday” march in Selma, Alabama.

She sees tremendous value in people being able to visit these historic locations remotely.

“Significant anniversaries are coming up, like the 60th anniversary of the Selma march, and unfortunately, we still have regular reminders that voting access is an ongoing concern. Being able to visit these sites remotely can be very powerful.”

Through grants and her seminar class, Race, Space, and Architecture in the United States, Willkens is training the next generation of architects and preservationists to get involved with their local communities and protect valuable places through technology.

“We’ve been able to take three groups of students down to the Penn Center in South Carolina. We stay in the historic buildings, we do survey and research work on site, and we work with community members. St. Helena Island is at this somewhat precarious intersection of climate change and surrounding development in the Gullah Geechee corridor, and it’s a microcosm of what a lot of historical sites are facing. The community has been very welcoming to us, and we’re excited about the work we’re doing there.”

That work has been funded by a Sustainability Next Seed Grant. She strongly encourages other faculty and students to get involved with the BBISS and the Sustainability Next strategic plan initiative.

“BBISS is a great place to get to know people from across disciplines, and I'm grateful for that,” she explains. “In any discipline, it's easy within a university to stay in your silo. Being part of BBISS has been a great opportunity to meet people from different programs and different parts of Georgia Tech. I love the emphasis on community-engaged work that moves sustainability from an abstract systems level to something tangible that is making a difference locally.”