Critical Issues and Key Points From the Survey to the Creation of the Historical Building Information Model: The Case of Santo Stefano Basilica

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The new era of designing in architecture and civil engineering applications lies in the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach, based on a 3D geometric model including a 3D database. This is easier for new constructions whereas, when dealing with existing buildings, the creation of the BIM is based on the accurate knowledge of the as-built construction. Such a condition is allowed by a 3D survey, often carried out with laser scanning technology or modern photogrammetry, which are able to guarantee an adequate points cloud in terms of resolution and completeness by balancing both time consuming and costs with respect to the request of final accuracy. The BIM approach for existing buildings and even more for historical buildings is not yet a well known and deeply discussed process. There are still several choices to be addressed in the process from the survey to the model and critical issues to be discussed in the modeling step, particularly when dealing with unconventional elements such as deformed geometries or historical elements. The paper describes a comprehensive workflow that goes through the survey and the modeling, allowing to focus on critical issues and key points to obtain a reliable BIM of an existing monument. The case study employed to illustrate the workflow is the Basilica of St. Stefano in Bologna (Italy), a large monumental complex with great religious, historical and architectural assets.

A Restoration Oriented Hbim System for Cultural Heritage Documentation: The Case Study of Parma Cathedral

“…In the work, all the three issues have been addressed, in order to define a complete methodology, but in this paper, the focus is mainly on survey and modelling phases. As far as geometric survey and data elaboration are concerned, although they are very investigated topics (Castagnetti et al, 2017;Fassi et al, 2010;Remondino, 2011) and, to date, the acquisition workflow is well-established, no specific references are about the integration of these acquired data in a BIM environment, nor about their exploitation to certify the quality of the BIM model. Likewise, 3D modelling techniques and commercial software that can be used to represent a building are well-known and discussed by literature (Achille et al, 2007;Guidi et al, 2009).…”

HBIM for Conservation: A New Proposal for Information Modeling

“…BIM on existing assets are generally based on the scan-to-BIM process (survey, 3D modeling, and BIM implementation). As far as survey is concerned, nowadays workflows and techniques are well established [11,28,29], and guidelines such as the English Heritage Metric Survey Practice [30] and Historic American Building Surveys (HABS) [31] are progressively appearing. Open research topics are big survey datasets management [32,33], multi-resolution surveys [34], and automatic point cloud segmentation [35][36][37].…”

“…BIM adoption is expanding worldwide, due to normative requirements [5][6][7] as well as to the improvements brought to the construction process. However, despite the undeniable pros it could provide to CH buildings [8][9][10], such as support for documentation and management [11][12][13], energy [14], and structural analyses [15,16] or virtual reconstruction [17,18], BIM is seldom applied by agencies in charge of conservation and is basically still a research topic [19][20][21].…”

Pasado, presente y futuro de los HBIM (Heritage/historic building information models)

“…Existen, además, muchos otros estudios realizados en el contexto de la metodología BIM aplicada a edificios históricos [4,5,7,11,13,18,19,21,24], pero todos son trabajos sobre un edificio específico y para un estilo arquitectónico particular. Ninguno de ellos ofrece una solución general, lo cual es lógico dado el amplio rango de posibilidades que se pueden encontrar cuando se trata de edificios históricos.…”