Monument Monitor

Similar to other heritage institutions of its size, Historic Environment Scotland has over 300 properties in it's care. These range from huge castles in the middle of cities to tumbledown brochs on remote islands. The team do a fantastic job managing their conservation, but cannot be everywhere at once. It is difficult to monitor long term trends in remote locations.

Historic properties however, are popular tourist attractions. In a recent survey by the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport showed that 73% of respondents had visited a heritage site in the past year; a figure which has been rising almost year on year. Visitors carry increasingly more sophisticated mobile phones with which they record their visits and to share with friends. Why not use these photographs to monitor heritage sites remotely?

Over the past two years at 20 different sites across Scotland visitors have been prompted by signs to take photographs of specific things at each site and submit them via email, WhatsApp, Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #monumentmonitor. We have been using this photographs to monitor long term and one of events at each site.

At Machrie Moor Standing Stone Circles, featured in this Zooniverse project, we have been monitoring ground water flooding. Situated on the Isle of Arran in Scotland, it comprises of six stone circles built around 2000 BCE. Due to the topography of the area the site is prone to flooding, especially in the furthermost and middle circle.

Our wonderful visitors have already captured the site over the past two years. Now we want your help to help us classify how much water is present in each image. These classifications will then be compared with historic weather data at the site. We are hope that with this we can build a model that will predict the levels of water logging over the next few years.