Integrated numerical analysis and Building Information Modeling for Cultural Heritage

The use of numerical simulation applied to heritage buildings triggers a tremendous increase in complexity and at the present time, few studies focus on this issue and the problems of their calibrations. The difficulties are affected by many factors: the complex geometry involved, the nonstandardization of building elements, the inertial behaviour of the wall masses, the importance of moisture transport; in short, the complexity of managing the design workflows in a conservation project of historical buildings. The integration of numerical simulation and Building Information Modeling is not yet automated and relies heavily on the manual steps and the individual experience. The research analyses the high potential of the use of the simulation of building performance, and the computational design along with Heritage Building Information Modeling, with the aim of pushing the three technologies to their potential limits, and promote their evolution towards an easier practical application. The paper presents an experimental HBIM workflow applied to a case study of a building located in an Italian historic centre and discusses a number of problems that still exist in the application of these workflows. They range from finding a correct set of information necessary for the analysis to the lack of interoperability that still exists between the software, up to the difficulties of the methodological approach. The results show that through a combination of recent open source software constantly evolving, it is possible to overcome some of the obstacles that prevent an effective interoperability between individual software, paving the way for an increasing number of useful solutions in the built heritage conservation.