ISAAC responds to the pressing demand for increasing the use of and access to European Cultural Heritage, which responds to the needs and challenges of the knowledge-based and networked society. The project aims a competitive advantage in the Information and Communication Technology. It lies in:

• Adopting a service-oriented architecture approach which guarantees to be open and interoperable and to offer multi-channel and ubiquitous access to cultural contents;
• Developing a system using a user’s conceptual model based on alternative case scenarios and user perspectives;
• Combining end-users perspectives and attraction management perspectives in defining the system specifications and requirements;
• Enabling the experimentation of the potential of Virtual Reality and Ambient Technology by developing an integrated software architecture;
• Providing an architecture capable of offering users customised e-services for retrieving and accessing multimedia information, based on state-of-the-art service-oriented, data mining and multi-agent technology;
• Including heritage interpretation and learning from a wide range of best practice examples;
• Creating an European reference model to standardise representation, annotation, presentation and retrieval of Content in the Cities’ Cultural Heritage domain;
• Employing a consortium comprising both public and private partners where the technology can find a proper and prompt adoption.

Four main impacts will be evident from the more intelligent tourist destinations that will result from the implementation of the ISAAC platform, directly related to the main Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Destination promotion drivers aimed at valorising the relationship between intelligent heritage and cultural tourism in Europe, namely:

1. Transition from single, isolated technologies to compelling and useful services in the field of European heritage through cultural tourism, which will lead to more sustainable use of cultural heritage resources and improve the attractiveness and competitiveness of the tourist destinations;
2. Improved interaction between tourists and citizens, city government, destination management and heritage and tourist providers to promote social inclusion and extend identity and “ownership” of the local communities and cultural heritage;
3. A new public asset – an intelligent city environment as a platform to new knowledge for tourists, citizens, businesses and institutions as the basis for the delivery of a wide range of integrated tourism e-services;
4. Captured and shared good practice in Digital Heritage, e-tourism, e-governance and e-destination management and implementation experience from across the European countries (and beyond).

ISAAC will impact five main groups of stakeholders:

1. Prospective tourists visiting the partner cities through using the ISAAC Platform and eservices;
2. Practitioners and researchers in ISAAC-relevant research areas through professional literature, events and through involvement in ISAAC’s design;
3. Tourist and heritage attraction managers and providers through ISAAC e-services;
4. Key decision makers through the provision of an evaluation framework to enable them to assess the impacts of e-services in the field of cultural heritage and tourism services in their locations;
5. Citizens living in the affected cities through participation in the project activites and the use of the disseminated ISAAC results.