Modeling the Fourth Dimension of Architectural Heritage: Enabling Processes for a Sustainable Conservation

Abstract

This study focuses on modeling the fourth dimension of historic architectures with an HBIM approach and special regard to stratigraphic analysis. The goal is to push the limits of current technology to understand the history of buildings, with impacts on protecting their authenticity; it is pursued with a practitioners-oriented methodology able to make aware models of their phases. The target audience are experts in the field of heritage conservation, while the outcome is to support long-term strategies for the sustainable management of heritage. Contents follow this structure: (1) Introduction: this section frames the benefits of affirming heritage’s physical authenticity and managing risks; it clarifies assumptions and the research aim; (2) State of the Art: this highlights the topic relevance, which is not yet fully resolved, focusing on semantics, critical-interpretative data control, and on the automation of some crucial results; (3) Materials and Methods: this describes the integrated workflow, including the photogrammetric acquisition, modeling, and data enrichment, the semi-automatic Harris matrix construction, and the optimization of laser data; (4) Results: this presents the results of modelling stratigraphic units, enriching them with information according to a semantics coherent with the conservation process, to govern the temporal relations while automating key outputs; (5) Discussion: this section refines the implemented solutions and introduce future works.

Static Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) for Heritage Building Information Modeling (HBIM): A Systematic Review

“…It requires specialty software, substantial hardware, and highly trained professionals to process and handle the scan data [41,48]. A TLS survey can also be time-consuming [49], especially when it is used to capture large and complex heritage sites and is sensitive to the environment such as lighting conditions, dust, fog, rain, etc. [46].…”

Building Information Modelling (BIM) Driven Sustainable Cultural Heritage Tourism

“…A total of 59 studies closely related to SDG 11 were screened from the results of the micro-qualitative analysis, of which 27 studies related to the specifc goal of SDG 11.3 regarding tourism management and facilities management, 27 studies were associated with SDG 11.4, dealing with cultural heritage risk management, cultural heritage conservation tools, and adaptive tourism development of heritage, and fewer concern SDG 11.6, with only six studies on reducing the environmental impacts of built heritage. As shown in Table 1, the case study [3,9,16,23,26,28,31,35,47,50,52, is the most often utilised research method for exploring BIM-driven cultural heritage conservation for sustainable development in cultural heritage tourism for SDG 11, since heritage conservation and planning management typically necessitate specialised sustainable measures [79], followed by modelling [5,7,19,21,33,[80][81][82][83][84], mixed research [4,8,15,[85][86][87][88][89], literature review [14,25,[90][91][92], and expert interviews [6,34,36]. The preservation and revitalisation of architectural building history is a component of urban renewal and construction [93].…”

“…At the same time, preventive conservation requires systematic management and continuous efforts. HBIM also supports multidimensional coordination management, allowing a spatiotemporal database to be created to reveal the evolution of buildings over time, supporting the long-term management of heritage [88]. In addition, preserving historical data associated with BIM improves visitors' understanding of the origins, changes, and present state of built heritage, increases the authenticity of heritage tourism, and helps to raise public consciousness of conservation [36].…”

Digitalization of culturally significant buildings: ensuring high-quality data exchanges in the heritage domain using OpenBIM

“…It is not unusual to capture the different historical stages of built assets in HBIM with several simultaneous models that correspond to each phase so as to understand and represent the development of the object under study [8][9][10]. Furthermore, dating periods as well as historic information on building materials and historical changes to the building, such as demolitions and renovations, can be integrated into the model for a better understanding and managing of the asset.…”

“…Previous research on a similar topic to the conservation plan includes data models for damage assessment [13,46] or other structural or physical properties [50]. Moreover the use of HBIM for stratigraphic analyses has been researched [9,51]. Acierno et al looked at the interactions between actors and HBIM data for the purpose of heritage conservation [52].…”