H-BIM Workflow for Interventions on Heritage Building Elements

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This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su14159703

Intervention projects for heritage buildings depend on the quality of multidisciplinary data sets; their collection, structure, and semantics. Building information model (BIM) based workflows for heritage buildings accumulate some of the data sets in a shared information model that contains the building’s geometry assemblies with associated attributes (such as material). A BIM model of any building can be a source of data for different engineering assessments, for example, solar and wind exposure and seismic vulnerability, but for historic buildings it is particularly important for interventions like conservation, rehabilitation, and improvements such as refurbishment and retrofitting. Semantic technologies, such as ontologies, enhance the quality of information on interventions in historical buildings.

heritage building information modelling (H-BIM) semantic model ifcOWL Erlangen CRM/OWL SPARQL algorithmic design

1. Introduction

Heritage building domain research co-develops information modelling and semantic modelling domains. Semantic technologies are methods and tools associated with data and the information that can be retrieved from it, enabling both human and machine “understanding” of the topic they focus on, e.g., taxonomies, glossaries, knowledge graphs, and ontologies. In 1993, Thomas Gruber defined ontology as an “explicit specification of a conceptualization” ^[1], i.e., a semantically structured description of concepts and of the connections between them. Ontologies are essentially composed of classes, subclasses, properties, restrictions, and instances. In the computer and information science, heavily connected to the architecture, engineering, construction, owner and operator (AECOO) industry, an ontology can be viewed as a representation vocabulary and the conceptualizations of the terms it contains, often specialized to some domain or subject matter ^[2].

The multidisciplinary applicability of semantic technologies, like ontologies, assists in improving interoperability, especially in fields where a reliable and precise knowledge of concepts is vital but often dispersed. However, due to the myriad of ontologies being developed, the principles of orthogonality (reusing definitions already created), cross-ontology compatibility, and sustainability ^[3], should be considered when extending or building a new ontology. The reuse of existing ontologies also prevents the duplication of prevalent terms, with the additional benefit of guaranteed usability and applicability ^[4].

Building information modelling (BIM) has an already robust and established important role in the heritage building domain. As a set of technologies, processes, and policies capable of incorporating quantitative and qualitative information about an asset, BIM has been proven adequate for projects related to heritage buildings, commonly designated heritage or historic building information modelling (H-BIM).

The connection between H-BIM and semantic technologies allows researchers, practitioners and specialists involved in the project to have more control on the data quality, relevance, and accuracy.

2. Heritage Buildings Interventions

Heritage or historic buildings are integrated in the cultural tangible immovable category of the heritage domain. When the value of their physical, historical, cultural, or ecological features is considered significant, buildings can be classified as heritage which assists in their safeguarding for posterity. The broad spectrum of possible measures spans from raising awareness (among communities, authorities, and decision makers) of the importance and benefits of their protection to highly technical localized structural interventions. Any considered measure is based and heavily depends on knowledge (contextual, detailed, technical, etc.) of the asset to be preserved. When the study of these buildings is on focus, numerous charters, standards, and guidelines serve as unavoidable references, namely:

International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (The Venice Charter) (1964) ^[5];
Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments (1931) ^[6];
Washington Charter for the Conservation of Historic Towns and Urban Areas (1987) ^[7];
The Charter on the Built Vernacular Heritage (1999) ^[8];
The Charter of Krakow—Principles for Conservation and Restoration of Built Heritage (2000) ^[9];
ICOMOS Charter—Principles for the Analysis, Conservation and Structural Restoration of Architectural Heritage (2003) ^[10];
The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance (2013) ^[11].

The previous references provide recommendations for the safeguard of heritage buildings and detail the types of interventions that assist in their protection, conservation, and rehabilitation.

3. Ontologies for Heritage Buildings

The cultural heritage domain benefits from the application of semantic technologies, such as ontologies, supporting information systems, and extending data models. When cultural heritage tangible assets are considered, particularly heritage buildings, ontologies support the qualitative collection of related data and its meaning, connecting concepts and clarifying the relationships between them.

The importance of using ontologies in the heritage buildings project domain is justified by several factors, for example, the connection with construction, where the terminology, materials, processes, and actors are vast and frequently complex. The particularities associated with interventions in heritage buildings, terminology, techniques, and multidisciplinary teams (often from fields not usually directly associated to construction projects, e.g., history, biology archaeology, history, tourism, and sociology), suggests that a connection between the concepts specific to the application domain, for example, heritage buildings interventions projects, should be established. Ontologies provide a way of understanding the relationships between the concepts in what can be called a federated, structured way. Concerning ontologies for the cultural heritage domain, the International Committee for Documentation Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM, ISO 21127: 2014—Information and documentation: A reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information) stands as one primary reference. Promoting information integration in the field of cultural heritage, the CIDOC-CRM is often used as a base for research in the built cultural heritage domain, integrated and expanded in the development of specialized ontologies.

The Cantabria’s Cultural Heritage Ontology ^[12] and the Built Cultural Heritage (BCH) ontology for preventive conservation ^[13] are examples of ontologies that use the CIDOC-CRM. The latest presents the development of an ontology by merging three ontologies, CIDOC-CRM, a CityGML-based data model obtained through a dedicated Application Domain Extension (ADE) and the Monument Damage ontology (Mondis), a method that was also used. Dedicated to 3D semantic annotations of the building conservation states, Messaoudi et al. ^[14] presented an ontology with classes mapped to the CIDOC-CRM, opening their research work to a broader research community. Acierno et al. use the CIDOC-CRM to derive a catalogue of architectural heritage, the Architecture Metadata Object Schema (ARMOS) ^[15].

A particularly relevant ontology for the present research (as it was chosen for extension) is the Erlangen CRM/OWL (ERCM), an implementation of the CIDOC-CRM, which includes detailed restrictions and is kept as close as possible to the CIDOC-CRM in terms of the text specification ^[16]. Developed at the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, the ECRM presents 85 classes and 283 properties.

Current technological developments such as 3D scanning, BIM, machine learning, and semantic web technologies, assist in obtaining, reasoning, and structuring data referent to heritage buildings. Ontologies provide needed support for their development ^[17]^[18]^[19]^[20]^[21].

4. Heritage Building Information Modelling and Semantic Technologies

Relevant for heritage buildings is the connection between the building and its historical background, the multidisciplinary collaboration (extended to areas not traditionally connected to construction) and the often specific techniques to perform interventions to the building, which makes H-BIM a good candidate for the management of all this information (geometric, alphanumeric, and documentation). Antonopoulou and Bryan ^[22] present a diagram that describes the H-BIM life cycle principle, connected to the H-BIM workflow, that can be summarized as a cyclic process: 1—identification of asset strategy; 2—research legislation; 3—preliminary survey; 4—determining options, 5—define detailed survey, 6—determining intervention; 7—physical intervention; 8—handover and 9—operation and future.

Scianna et al. ^[23] suggest a workflow for the construction of a H-BIM model with 1—acquisition of information; 2—categorization of building elements; 3—survey; 4—3D modelling; 5—output. The authors highlighted that the main difficulties were found in the modelling phase and that the creation of parameterized objects is complex and not always necessary. For example, for some structural analyses, a geometrical simplification sometimes must be carried out for calculation purposes. Different modelling approaches are mentioned, e.g., connected to different types of parametric modelling, based on photogrammetric input data and scan-to-BIM. The decision on which to use should be taken by all project participants, mainly based on the intended use(s) of the model and objectives of the project, availability of equipment, software, and expertise of the BIM modelers. Detailed parametric modelling of individual parts of buildings (including deformations) is a time consuming and demanding task. Translating complex building components to parametric objects is therefore not common practice. It is also important to mention, though not the focus of the paper, that for the analysis of structural deformations in heritage buildings, as-is H-BIM models obtained through laser scanning can be crucial for the assessment of deviations and displacements, as detailed in ^[24]. León-Robles et al. ^[25] presented a similar use, applied to a stone bridge.

Dedicated to the review of the semantic enrichment of H-BIM, Cursi et al. ^[26] present an investigation on how semantic and knowledge management can elevate the quality of non-geometric information associated with H-BIM models. The authors define two approaches, the relational and the ontological, and detail their main differences. For the relational approach, the semantic enrichment makes use of an external database. The ontological approach uses external knowledge representation models. One of the mentioned differences is that the ontological approach focuses on specific processes, where the exchange of information is streamlined to the essential. The authors conclude that there is no single way to integrate data across all the resources involved, and specific workflows are often better supported than an overall approach.

The previously described references confirm the relevance of associating H-BIM with semantic technologies. BIM is highly connected to the use of standards, particularly open standards, such as the IFC, proposed by buildingSMART ^[27]. One of the development efforts for a complete representation of the IFC standard in a Web Ontology Language (OWL) is also connected to buildingSMART ^[28]. The ifcOWL ontology is automatically generated, using the EXPRESS schema ^[29] (currently up to the IFC 4X3 RC1) and can be described, in a very summarized way, as an ontology for the representation of construction data. The process results in a very rich ontology (1326 classes, 1596 properties, 1162 named individuals), which can pose issues related to its management, reuse, and understandability. Aware of these and other “disadvantages”, Terkaj and Pauwels ^[30] proposed a modularization approach to the ifcOWL ontology.

The following workflow (Figure 1) has been researched, applied and validated, demonstrating that use of semantic technologies paired with H-BIM enhances the management of specialized information about the assets.

Figure 1. Concept of the H-BIM to semantic model workflow for heritage buildings.

References

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