meltwaterfalls has made a new version of his Google Earth file of Tentative Sites:

"I have now completed countries A-C and a few others.

I'm about a 3rd of the way through the sites now, but thought you may like to add it to the forum as it now includes China (162 separate locations!)."

See http://www.worldheritagesite.org/TentativeSites.kmz

It is heavy going at times but it is fun getting to explore some of the less well known countries in the world. At least I am ready with some knowledge if I ever bump into someone from Comoros.

If you find any errors feel free to let me know. I have tried to be a little more rigorous on the most recent update but still there are some places of which hardly any information exists online.

I will carry on working through them in alphabetical order, but if anyone has a specific request for countries to do out of sequence then let me know and I will crack on with them.

And I can confirm with first hand experience that at least 4 of your Comoros sites are correctly located (Moroni, Iconi and the 2 Mt Kartala sites). It brought back memories to "home in" on the village of Iconi. The "centre" is actually at the very top of the page just below the yellow sand where the ruined palace can be made out next to a big green tree to the left of a car park!!! The mountain on the other side of the bay to the north is also part of the site and its seaward fortifications can just be made out!

Thanks for your efforts ......... and keep up the good work!!

Glad I am getting them right. The medinas in Comoros ones were quite enlightening, it was odd looking at street plans that looked like the sites I visited in North Africa in the Indian Ocean. It really hammered home the extent of Arab trading networks.

Also it is turning up some interesting sites that are not on the list at the moment.

The Afghan sites struck me as being particularly worthwhile.

In China some of the Eastern parts of the Silk Road proposal were exceptionally interesting, and some could easily be WHS on their own. I always used to wizz through the Xinjiang sections of my Central Asia guides but I went back and started poreing over them. It really looks like a great region to visit.

Also I am still surprised to find that the Okavango Delta isn't a WHS yet, but perhaps I have an elevated sense of it's worth from its regular occurrence in David Attenborough documentaries.

There are plenty of nice European towns on there which I am sure will be inscribed over time despite them being very well covered already, though I did like the look of Jajce in Bosnia which is unique for having a large waterfall in the town centre.

Brest fortress in Belarus also looks impressive for its monumental Stalinist architecture. I was disappointed to have to miss it last year because of visa restrictions, but it certainly is more worthwhile than the two dull rebuilt castles Belarus already has inscribed.

There are a couple of quirky listings as well which may be rubbish or may turn up a gem. Ještěd TV transmitter and hotel in Czech Republic. Joderall Bank Observatory, UK, The Arts School in Havana, Cuba seem pretty interesting. Then there is the Locomotive depot of the Temuco Railroad Station, Chile, it seems to just be a train shed to me, a nice one but just a train shed non the less.

And I think I will dread the day that the Hoge Kempen Rural - Industrial Transition Landscape, Belgium gets a place on the list, about as under-whelming a site as it is possible to propose. A great initiative for reclaiming land, but any recognition beyond municipal recreation area would be going a little overboard.

For google maps users this link should work.

Are you doing this all by hand meltwaterfalls?

Hi Paul,

Thanks for that, what did you use to get them on Google Maps (It actually will come in useful for my day job) I know it could be done but I hadn't looked into it yet.


Yeah it is being done by hand. The problem I have with automating it is that the locations are not consistent.
About 30% have no location listed at all.
Of those that have a location, a fair few are non-specific, such as in XX province or 175km north west of XX City.
For those that do have coordinates many are not formatted correctly for Google Earth.
Then some use a random co-ordinate system, such as Cyprus which used Eastings and Northings (completely new to me and GE wasn't having any of it)
I found a few tools that worked well for those with consistant co-ordinates such as the Bosnian Medieval tombstones, but it still took a fair bit of time to clean the data properly.

But also doing it long hand is kind of interesting as I get to do a little bit of research about each site. It appeals to my geeky side, and keeps me out of the pub for a little while :).
A few years back I mapped a fair chunk of the actual World Heritage List and found it very useful to learn about the sites. But then UNESCO beat me to it by releasing the actual list in a .kmz file.

But if anyone has any useful tools feel free to let me know as I am starting to use some of this stuff at work as well.

Good work Meltwaterfalls!
The link to Google maps is working, but there are some empty description boxes (for instance around Xi'an - China)

Great work on the South Korean sites! Is it possible to do North Korean sites, or is this not possible?

I noticed these two tentative sites have not been included yet.

Sites of fossilized dinosaurs throughout the Southern seacoast (2002)
Geographic Location:
a) Uhang-ri, Hwangsan-myeon, Haenam-gun, Jeollanam-do.
34°45' N, 126°25' E

b) Bibong-ri, Deungnyang-myeon, Boseong-gun, Jeollanam-do.
34°45' N, 127°10' E

c) Sado-ri, Hwajeong-myeon, City of Yeosu, Jeollanam-do.
34°34'-37' N, 127°31'-34' E

d) Seoyoo-ri, Buk-myeon, Hwasun-gun, Jeollanam-do.
35°09'51" N, 127°36'31" E

e) Deongmyeong-ri, Hai-myeon, Goseong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do.
34°54' N, 128°08' E

Southwestern Coast Tidal Flats (2010)
Coordinates:
Gochang Tidal Flats N35 27 35 E126 26 42

Suncheon Tidal Flats N34 52 55 E127 30 48

Muan Tidal Flats N34 58 15 E126 22 37

Buan Tidal Flats N35 43 35 E126 36 16

Boseong Tidal Flats N34 49 48 E127 22 41

Sinan Tidal Flats N34 49 31 E126 07 10

Two small errors
*For the petroglyphs site there are two locations (so far only one is included on google maps, though they must be very close to each other)

Daegokcheon Stream Petroglyphs
Coordinates:
Bangudae Petroglyphs: N35 36 50 E129 10 28

Petroglyphs in Cheonjeon-ri: N35 36 53 E129 10 25

*I am pretty sure the coordinates for the Kilns is wrong. As far as I know no kilns included in the nominated property are located in Gangjin city, but are actually located in the nearby area south of Gangjin.

Kangjingun Kiln Sites
Coordinates: Taegu-Myon, Kangjin-Gun, Chollanam-Do Long.126°26'--47' East Lat. 34°29'--31' North

The easiest way to generate the link for google maps is to go to maps.google.com and just type in the full address of the klm file in the search box. This should then import the POIs. You can then simply click the chain icon to generate the link. This link contains attributes for positioning and zoom levels etc but the 'q' attribute is all that you really need.

You can also generate the URL by appending the 'q' attribute with the address of the klm file to the google address but you must first encode the address of the klm file using %hh encoding.

Thanks Paul, I think I follow you on that, will give it a try in a little while.

It seems to be all the sites associated with The Silk Road that are doing that. Not really sure why as they appear fine in Google Earth and they display the name in the side bar on Google Maps. Will try and find a solution, but I can't see a reason at the moment.

winterkjm
Thanks for picking those out, not sure how I missed the Dinosaur and Mud flats ones, but they were nice and easy to map as they had decent co-ordinates.

The Petroglyphs one I was just being a little lazy, but I have mapped them accurately now, will update the file in a while. The co-ordinates weren't quite right on the UNESCO site but they were almost there.

The Kilns one is a tougher one. The co-ordinates are kind of useless, they show a broad area based on 4 extremes which are all in the sea, finding some disused kilns in a 124km² seemed like fun though :)
Having said that, I managed to find the Celadon Museum in Sadang-ni I doubt the museum itself is part of the proposal however Sadang-ni is listed as one of the four main sites so it seems reasonable that this is the best place to put a marker. Nearby I have found villages which I think are called Kyeyul li and Yongun-ni, I can't find an appropriate Sudong-ni though. All of which are outside the area shown by the co-ordinates, but they are close to the eastern edge of them.
This mapping can eat time, but I kind of love it.. on to North Korea then.

Actually I just clicked on a link on that page and it has a load of information about the kiln at historic site 68 which is mentioned in alot of the searches, so it seems that the museum may include a kiln as well.

Can't get the liink to work to that page but it is here if you wanted a look:
http://jikimi.cha.go.kr/english/search_plaza_new/EMapResultView.jsp?VdkVgwKey=13,0068 0000,36&queryText=(v_esidocode=36<and> v_elcto=42)&requery=&strGuCode=42&strSidoCode=36

The museum has original kilns, I visited it :-)

I am not too familiar with Google Earth. I followed the link, but it seems there have been no new additions. Should I not follow the same old link? Or is meltwaterfalls just taking a break from adding thousands of sites!! It is really interesting finding the exact locations of vague TWHS and serial nominations that I might visit in the near future.

I just sent through the latest version, so look for Els' posting to get the updated file. I will look at seeing if there is somewhere online I can store and amend it as I go along so that it is a bit easier in future.

I have completed the D countries and North Korea as well. It may take a little while to get the next batch on as I have a busy period ahead. But I will try and get a few bits updated for you.

Again any requests on countries not yet done I will have a go at, if not I will continue in mostly alphabetical order.

it's updated!