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Cultural heritage (CH) is a unique expression of human achievement which is endangered today. The world is losing many monuments and sites more rapidly than it can even be documented. Its documentation, pro-tection, and proper management are critical to enabling the scholars of heritage to study and interpret it, on behalf of and for the benefit of present and future generations. Documentation prior to any intervention in the CH is now an integral part of any conservation and preventive plan and process. It is also an essential prereq-uisite to form a comprehensive understanding of cultural significance and factors affecting CH conditions. As a baseline, surveying, recording, and documentation are critical for monitoring changes over time, degrada-tion, modifications and/or conservation intervention in addition to risk assessment and mitigation. This an-thology will review 50 International Charters, Conventions and Principles along nine decades (1930-2020) and will highlight 27 out of them related to documentation, recording and surveying. More analytically, this study reviewed 13 charters of the 27 from the period from the 30’s to the 90’s of the 20th Century, another 14 from the first and second decades of the new millennium (2000-2020), four significant publications on «recording» from English Heritage, initiatives of CIPA and Getty Conservation Institute, and the 10 representative docu-ments of the second decade of the New Millennium together with one notable publication of CIPA. The paper aims to present a critical review, assessment and investigation of these International Charters, Conventions and Principles related to the three main terms; surveying, recording, and documentation of CH. They will be discussed within the conservation, monitoring and management scope, from data collection to data sharing. The paper will trace the evolving conception of these terms and their interplay in the aforementioned Charters.

This publication and development of a risk management methodology is the result of the Risk Mapping Project in Petra, a project of the UNESCO Amman Office in partnership with the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation (RLICC) at the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven in Belgium and in cooperation with the Petra Development and Tourism Regional Authority (PDTRA) and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DoA). This collaborative project started in February 2011 for a period of fifteen months in response to the increasing risks for loss of heritage values at the site and a need for their assessment and proposing responses to reduce their impact. Petra Archaeological Park (PAP), the most significant World Heritage site in Jordan, with its unique landscape, monuments and natural gorges, is a fragile property. Further to its inherent fragile characteristics, Petra is endangered by natural and human-made threats and impacts. Lack of an implemented management plan coupled with no clear property boundaries and an absence of buffer zones as recommended by the World Heritage Committee, and weak visitor management strategies, result in major gaps in the management of the property and increasing risks to the site. Accordingly, risk assessment and research to better address the challenges of the management of Petra World Heritage site have been identified as the most appropriate tools for mitigation of risks and protection of the values of the property. This publication examines a systematic approach in order to identify threats, their causes, and understand and assess their effects, and proposes ways to choose responses and mitigation strategies in order to reduce the impact of threats. nrpages: 168 status: published