From survey to analysis for Cultural Heritage management: a new proposal for database design in BIM

Abstract

The thesis work presents the implementation of a BIM system aimed at maintenance, conservation and restoration of Cultural Heritage. Its main goal is to give a concrete answer to the lack of specific tools required by Cultural Heritage documentation: organized and coordinated storage and management of historical data, easy analysis and query, time management, 3D modelling of irregular shapes, flexibility, userfriendliness, etc. BIM methodology, providing an information system at architectural scale and making it possible to manage semantically enriched three-dimensional models, represents an effective solution for supporting scheduled maintenance and conservation activities (which are an increasing important instrument for safeguard and conservation of Cultural Heritage), on condition that suited tools and functions are made available. The application developed in this thesis started from a BIM system and enriched it with functions to address these goals. In particular, a specifically designed database was implemented, where all data about the historical building can be stored. A tailored database is necessary to organize historical data that generally are not standardized, have a complex structure and are fuzzy in their description. The database is compliant to the currently in-force Italian regulations and allows storing and retrieving information useful for maintenance purposes. The application was implemented with the specific aim of providing tools also for non- AEC experts: it gives user-friendly graphical interfaces to access the data and makes available tools for data entry, element modelling, attribute query and thematic mapping. It works standalone or can be integrated into the main commercial BIM software (at the moment the experimentation has been limited to Revit) or accessed via web. One of the main goals was not to be bounded to a specific software and to make the system usable on a larger scale, by developing a flexible and customizable methodology that can be applied to a wide range of historical assets.