DOI: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-735911/v1
Guangyuan thousand-buddha grotto is of great value in researching Buddhism spread in China. By joint effect of various factors, the grottos have developed serious diseases, which threaten the long-term preservation. To date, the existing study can neither reveal the contribution each disease makes to nor the grottos’ preserve situation in a quantized way. Therefore, establishing a scientific evaluation system to explore the effection of each disease and assess grottos’ preserve situation degree has been a significant topic for grotto’s conservation. In this research, the authors selected 11 grottos of middle Tang dynasty in Guangyuan thousand-buddha grotto as survey objects, traditional diseases investigation was taken and analytic hierarchy process (AHP method) was applied to build a system to calculate weight of 15 diseases and evaluate grottos’ preserve situation. The result shows, 15 diseases can be classified as two risk categories, and every disease has its own weight on effecting grotto’s preserve situation. AHP method is suitable for heritage assessment with complex structure.