Some places make you careful with abstractions. Machupicchu is one of them. I am writing this during the first field mission for the new carrying capacity and Limits of Acceptable Change study for the Historic Sanctuary of Machupicchu. Between Cusco and Machupicchu, every decision about data, routes, indicators or visitor flows begins with the same condition: it has to serve conservation.
I am participating as the expert in Informatics and Territorial Information Systems in the international team of ARS Progetti SPA, the Rome-based consultancy preparing the study for the Government of Peru. MINCETUR launched it with the Ministry of Culture and SERNANP. The assignment has a 190-calendar-day execution period and is planned to conclude in the first half of 2027: planning and inception; diagnosis and baseline; evaluation and modelling; final proposal and implementation.
Machupicchu is a UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 1983 as a mixed cultural and natural property. Its Outstanding Universal Value, or OUV, is not a decorative label. It is the frame that makes conservation relevant to every decision. MINCETUR's public announcement defines the scope: visitor flows, territorial conditions, cultural and natural heritage conservation, and tourism services, in accordance with the SHM-PANM Master Plan 2026-2031.
Conservation defines capacity
This principle has an important institutional history. The 2017 Reactive Monitoring mission observed that the carrying-capacity calculation for the Llaqta was mainly linked to tourism demand and visitor experience, while OUV and conservation parameters needed to be central. The mission called for long-term effects on the property's values and attributes to be considered, including erosion, fauna disturbance, impacts on flora, waste and pollution.
That criterion reached Decision 41 COM 7B.36 of the World Heritage Committee. The Committee asked the Peruvian State to review carrying capacities against conservation needs, apply clear visitor limits, define a vision based on OUV attributes and link it to an integrated natural and cultural monitoring system with defined indicators.
That leads to a simple principle for my part of the work: conservation defines capacity. A useful carrying capacity does not fit into one isolated number. It works as a tool for adaptive management, fed by evidence, indicators and continued observation. The information system can recommend, alert and simulate scenarios; the decision remains human and institutional.
Building an evidence system
My role includes designing the data model and the study's information and monitoring system, analytics, remote sensing, GIS and visitor-flow simulation. In practical terms, I work to ensure that territorial observations, conservation indicators and visitation dynamics can speak to one another within a shared and auditable framework.
The sequence matters. Before applying analytics, geospatial models or artificial intelligence, we need to know where each dataset comes from, what it means, its quality, when it is updated and who is accountable for it. Without that discipline, it is easy to produce attractive dashboards and fragile conclusions. In a sanctuary such as Machupicchu, traceability is part of methodological rigor.
Privacy matters too. Visitor flows can be studied without turning visitors into identifiable subjects. Counting people without identifying them is a practical privacy-by-design rule: the study needs aggregated patterns, not individual profiles.
From simulating people to simulating scenarios
There is a long thread connecting this work to my earlier career. In the 1990s I researched the simulation of parallel systems. Later, agent-based models let me bring a similar question to complex human systems: what happens when many individual decisions produce collective dynamics.
Managing flows at a World Heritage site requires that perspective. The work is to explore scenarios under explicit conditions, understand sensitivities and support better institutional choices. Simulation adds value when it is calibrated against reality, acknowledges its limits and remains linked to conservation indicators.
My recent work in applied AI and AI-system auditing, including GEORadar, follows the same methodological discipline: build an evidence base, declare assumptions, measure results and avoid mistaking an automated output for institutional judgement. Here the goal is not commercial. It is to contribute to protecting a cultural and natural property of exceptional value.
Rigor, learning and responsibility
This first field mission begins a demanding learning period. I hope to understand more deeply the relationships between territory, heritage, conservation and visitor experience, and to contribute from territorial informatics and simulation a system that is useful to those responsible for decisions.
The commitment is clear: rigor with data, caution with technology, privacy by design and conservation as the higher criterion. The study belongs to the Government of Peru. My role is to work carefully within an international team so that evidence helps protect Machupicchu now and over the long term.