Mapping the global distribution of coastal World Heritage Sites: Glo-CoH, a new Global Coastal Heritage dataset

Coastal heritage sites face significant global challenges such as flooding and coastal erosion, exacerbated by climate-induced sea-level rise and coastal development. The ability to accurately simulate and assess potential exposure of heritage sites to these hazards has been hampered by a lack of digital high resolution spatial data accurately recording the topographic boundaries of heritage sites. The Glo-CoH dataset contains digitized boundary extents of all the heritage sites inscribed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as World Heritage properties of Outstanding Universal Value that are situated along the global coastline under 20 m Above Mean Sea Level (AMSL). It comprises a total of 1,250 individual serial sites covering the breadth of designated cultural, natural and mixed heritage sites and encompasses an area covering over 235 million hectares. A programme of site digitisation utilised extant site plans and Google Earth worldwide satellite imagery to locate and digitise heritage site boundaries. The quality of the resulting dataset was assessed by applying a mixed qualitative/quantitative validation procedure to a stratified sub-sample, encompassing the quality of source material, site identification, visibility and digitising accuracy. The validation procedure suggests 92% of digitized sites obtain validation scores indicative of optimal digitisation accuracy. The Glo-CoH dataset is made available for geo-spatial analysis and intended for use by researchers and practitioners looking to assess or plan environmental, climatic, economic, infrastructural and societal dimensions relating to coastal heritage at site, city, and regions up to global scales.