Cultural Ecosystem Services and Sense of Place Diagnostic Model for Heritage Cities in the Global South

Compound crises of heritage cities in the global south led to the destruction of both physical and intangible assets, as well as the processes and relationships that sustain them; nevertheless, while there is more awareness regarding the importance of intangible heritage, regeneration approaches after the crisis period still focus on tangible losses, while the intangible cultural aspects are often overlooked in planning, especially under conditions of restricted field access. This paper proposes a remote-first CESSOP diagnostic model (CSDM), integrating CES and SOP in four decision-focused products: Crisis Pressure Profile (CPP), Biocultural Asset Map (BAM), CESSOP Vulnerability Matrix (CSVM), and modeling and Action Typology and Priority Pathways (ATPP), rather than adopting an existing framework. The Cultural Ecosystem Services and Sense of Place Diagnostic Model (CESSOP Diagnostic Model). The CSDM is new; it is a theoretically constructed, theoretically grounded, crisis-sensitive diagnostic methodology designed for heritage cities under conditions of data scarcity and restricted field access. This approach includes aspects of document research, open-source data, environmental morphological intelligence, social networks and remote participation inputs, supported with embedded confidence rating. The methodology is illustrated by a study of old Sana’a, Yemen, and it is applied in cases when there are few opportunities for direct observation.