HBIM and Virtual Tools: A New Chance to Preserve Architectural Heritage

Abstract

Nowadays, architectural heritage is increasingly exposed to dangers due to natural disasters or human invasive actions. However, management and conservation represent crucial phases within the life cycle of historical buildings. Unfortunately, the complexity of conservation practices and the lack of knowledge of historic buildings are the cause of an inefficient recovering process in case of emergencies. To overcome this problem, this research aims to ensure the preservation of relevant information through the use of building information modeling (BIM) methodology. By developing historic building information models (HBIMs), it is possible to enhance the architectural heritage. This represents an opportunity to incorporate digital media into the global heritage conservation field. To achieve this goal, a historical castle was selected as a case study; this unique piece of architecture is located in the Piedmont Region, close to city of Turin (Italy). The results show a direct relation between a historical digital model, finalized to the management of architectural and system components, and visualization tools. To conclude, the adoption of this strategy is an effective way to preserve and consult information using advanced visualization techniques based on augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR).

Remote Diagnosis of Architectural Heritage Based on 5W1H Model-Based Metadata in Virtual Reality

“…Several researchers have proposed to identify the conditions of architectural heritage using virtual reality [7,8]. Virtual reality has an advantage in simulating a real environment to give the impression of being immersed in that environment [9].…”

Initial data preparation for 3D modelling of heritage building

“…However, in the era of modern technologies, the activity of restoration and reconstruction of heritage buildings is the area where modern digital technologies are the least ever applied (Volk, Stengel, & Schultmann, 2014;Antón, Medjdoub, Shrahily, & Moyano, 2018). Historical buildings require special attention while preserving their cultural and artistic values, so the three-dimensional digital model of the building can be used preparing operational or renewal plans and responding to a particular event (Osello, Lucibello, & Morgagni, 2018). The aim of the presented research is to analyze strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of preparation the initial data, heritage building 3D model development and parametric object databases creation.…”

Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation Using a Deep Learning Framework for Cultural Heritage

“…Therefore, Point Clouds management, processing and interpretation is gaining importance in the field of geomatics and digital representation. These geometrical structures are becoming progressively mandatory not only for creating multimedia experiences [4,5], but also (and mainly) for supporting the 3D modeling process [6-9], where even neural networks are lately starting to be employed [10,11].Simultaneously, the recent research trends in HBIM (Historical Building Information Modeling) are aimed at managing multiple and various architectural heritage data [12][13][14], facing the issue of transforming 3D models from a geometrical representation to an enriched and informative data collector [15]. Achieving such result is not trivial, since HBIM is generally based on scan-to-BIM processes that allow to generate a parametric 3D model from Point Cloud [16]; these processes, although very reliable since they are made manually by domain experts, have two drawbacks that are noteworthy: first, it is very time consuming and, secondly, it wastes an uncountable amount of data, given that a 3D scanning (both TLS or Close Range Photogrammetry based), contains much more information than the ones required for describing a parametric object.…”

“…Therefore, Point Clouds management, processing and interpretation is gaining importance in the field of geomatics and digital representation. These geometrical structures are becoming progressively mandatory not only for creating multimedia experiences [4,5], but also (and mainly) for supporting the 3D modeling process [6-9], where even neural networks are lately starting to be employed [10,11].…”