Authorities in Shaoxing City, east China's Zhejiang Province, on Saturday issued a draft plan to preserve and plan the historic and cultural city for the 2021-2035 period, stressing the significance to apply technologies such as the Internet of Things and Big Data to build a digital platform for the ancient city.

The ancient city of Shaoxing boasts a history of over 2,500 years. Widely known for its beautiful scenery and rich culture and heritage, it is also called the "museum with no walls."

Nine national-level cultural relic sites and ten provincial-level ones are located in the city's iconic 9.09-square-km old district where literary figures in ancient China used to live and have left behind a huge amount of cultural heritage.

The newly issued plan specifies protection measures in terms of the layout of the core preservation area, historical axis, landmarks, and water system, and emphasizes the application of digital means.

At the information center for the ancient city, visitors can see the real-time scene of every corner of the ancient city via a digital screen, which is regarded as a microcosm of the city's information management system for ancient city preservation.

"We have established a full-scale database for the ancient city using scanning holography, completed refined modelling for important cultural relic sites, and realized the 'above ground plus underground' real-scene 3D modeling, so as to truly restore the structure, features, architecture forms and underground space of the ancient city, and provide digital support for the protection of the features of the ancient city and the repair and development of the ancient buildings inside," said Xu Juemin, director of office for historic cultural city protection in Shaoxing.

So far the platform has included images and functions of 14,787 buildings in the ancient city, and scanned in detail 94 key cultural relics protection units and more than 30 kilometers of historic cultural blocks.

Moving forward, the city will further enhance the conservation and utilization of the ancient city with integration of culture, business and tourism industries.