Heritage Building Information Modelling

Yusuf Arayici, John Counsell, Lamine Mahdjoubi, Gehan Nagy, Soheir Hawas, Khaled Dweidar, Yusuf Arayici, John Counsell, Lamine Mahdjoubi, Gehan Ahmed Nagy, Soheir Hawas, Khaled Dweidar

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317239758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Methods & Materials

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is being debated, tested and implemented wherever you look across the built environment sector. This book is about Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM), which necessarily differs from the commonplace applications of BIM to new construction.

Where BIM is being used, the focus is still very much on design and construction. However, its use as an operational and management tool for existing buildings, particularly heritage buildings, is lagging behind.

The first of its kind, this book aims to clearly define the scope for HBIM and present cutting-edge research findings alongside international case studies, before outlining challenges for the future of HBIM research and practice.

After an extensive introduction to HBIM, the core themes of the book are arranged into four parts:

• Restoration philosophies in practice
• Data capture and visualisation for maintenance and repair
• Building performance
• Stakeholder engagement

This book will be a key reference for built environment practitioners, researchers, academics and students engaged in BIM, HBIM, building energy modelling, building surveying, facilities management and heritage conservation more widely.

1 Introduction

John Counsell and Yusuf Arayici

1.1 Introduction

This book is about Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM). This is a term that has only begun to be used in the latter part of the last decade, since Building Information Modelling (BIM) superseded 3D digital modelling and computer aided design (CAD) as the term generally used to describe the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for the design, construction, and procurement of the modern built environment. It is sometimes also defined as Historic Building Information Modelling, a somewhat narrower term (Murphy et al 2009). One of the earliest definitions of the principles and purpose of Heritage Information Modelling stemmed from the Getty Conservation Institute’s Recording, Documentation, & Information Management (RecorDIM) Initiative (2003–2007) (Eppich & Chabbi 2007).

This book was inspired by a workshop held in March 2015 in Luxor, Egypt, entitled “Trends in Heritage Focused Building Information Modelling and Collaboration for Sustainability”, supported by the British Council’s Newton Fund and the Egyptian government’s Science and Technological Development Fund. The workshop was attended by a number of Egyptian and UK researchers in the field of HBIM. The book provides a critical analysis of current HBIM development and research. Building Information Modelling is still variously defined and described, and so it is that current approaches that are claimed to be HBIM display equal or greater diversity. This introductory chapter first discusses the origins of HBIM, then outlines the format of the book and gives a context to that format. It will be of use to all those who care for our built heritage and seek better tools with which to record its value, clarify its significance, and conserve it in the long term.

In preparing for the workshop on HBIM in March 2015 in Luxor, Egypt, the authors claimed a need for “analysis of the long-term potential for sustainable redeployment and reuse of Heritage”. They argued that “increasing resource scarcities require improved analytical tools for conserving existing buildings in general, and mitigating climate change; and that Heritage buildings form a particular challenge, due to the need to conserve their historic and aesthetic worth, addressing environmental social and economic sustainability.” These pillars of sustainability are not fixed; perceptions of quality of life change over time, with resulting dissatisfaction with heritage structures and a view that they have become unfit for their purpose. The authors also claimed that the “Heritage Buildings that are most relevant and at risk were not so much unoccupied national or internationally important monuments, but the cultural backdrop of occupied architecture that: has historic and aesthetic value; demands particular maintenance and refurbishment skills and analysis; deploys expensive materials that may be in increasing shortage; and generally cannot affordably be replaced with better performing new constructions.”

1.2 HBIM in context

A UK government (2012) publication on BIM states that it “is the first truly global digital construction technology and will soon be deployed in every country in the world”. A Cabinet Office publication (2012) further defined BIM as “the process of generating and managing information about a built asset over its whole life”. Nevertheless, there is a strong focus on new construction (and at best major refurbishment) in these definitions. In predicting the future goal of level 3 of BIM, the UK government (2015) refined their definition as “a collaborative way of working, underpinned by the digital technologies which unlock more efficient methods of designing, delivering, and maintaining physical built assets. BIM embeds key product and asset data in a 3D computer model that can be used for effective management of information throughout an assets lifecycle – from earliest concept through to operation.” This aspirational view of BIM focuses on the widest participative use by all possible stakeholders, throughout the lifecycle of the built asset. Yet an NBS report stressed, “Where BIM is being used, the focus is still very much on design and construction, with use as an operational and management tool for buildings lagging behind” (NBS 2013).

By contrast with ‘new construction BIM’ where the assets do not yet exist, a key question for HBIM is “Why model when the structure can be experienced in reality?” It may therefore be more appropriate to consider the need for a detailed 3D reference system to be “used for effective management of information about the heritage asset”. This could then also support information overlaid via augmented reality tools. Yet much of relevance in understanding and valuing heritage is not fully visible or accessible, whether through previous destruction, reconstruction, or re-concealment, for which modelling may be considered appropriate. Uses change over time for much of our built heritage, and the repurposing that then takes place may now also justify modelling to fully test and explore the impacts and the sustainability of the resources required before implementation. Chapters in this book address each of these premises.

1.3 Progress to date

It seems appropriate, in a book on heritage and BIM, to briefly outline the antecedents of the 3D digital information modelling of heritage. Ivan Sutherland (1963) is often attributed with the initiation of CAD in 1963, although his ‘Sketchpad’ programme was 2D rather than 3D. One of the authors first saw ‘fly-rounds’ of 3D digital building models, fully lit and colour rendered by both Intergraph and Calcomp, around 1980. However, the emphasis for design and construction remained focused on 2D digital replications of drawing boards, since at the time these 3D modelling approaches were not commercially viable, taking some three weeks to rewrite the program to change the location of a window. The potential commercial impact of 3D digital models of heritage arrived in the mid 1980s. For example, the 1986 JP Morgan Bank Headquarters in London, designed by BDP, used 3D hidden-line-based depictions of the listed City of London Boys’ School on the Thames frontage to examine the impact of the new construction on its context, and a similar approach to examine the new building’s impact on the city of London Heights, devised to protect key views of St Paul’s Cathedral. These could both be explored interactively, but in wireframe graphics only. By the mid-1990s the first major implementations of virtual reality were taking place, such as the 1995 interactive full-colour VR reconstruction of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Lascaux Caves, closed to the public due to damage from earlier visitor numbers (Britton 1998).

Worthing and Counsell (1999) described “issues arising from computer-based recording of heritage sites” focused upon the 1996 modelling of the Tower of London in its central London context. These visualisations were used by Historic Royal Palaces and the Tower Environs Partnership in order to serve technical studies to underpin proposed enhancement of the surroundings of the Tower of London. However, the 1995 study that gave impetus for that modelling (outlined in the paper) was that Historic Royal Palaces wanted visualisable output from a ‘3D Geographic Information System (3D GIS)’ that merged their Oracle Text-based maintenance management system with their newly commissioned highly detailed digital survey drawings, commissioned following the disastrous Hampton Court fire of 1986.

It may therefore be considered that practical and affordable HBIM was only realisable from the mid-1990s. Ogleby (1995) described the process as “much of the input for these systems is produced using CAD, and as a result of the advances mentioned previously much of the input to the CAD models comes from photogrammetry.” Ogleby (op. cit.) also affirmed that “work like that of Cooper et al…. on the Tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, for example, would not have been possible even 10 years ago”. The Cyrax time-of-flight laser scanner was patented in 1998 and initiated a new era in high-speed 3D data capture.

In the two decades that followed, there were many research projects focused on digital heritage and digitising heritage. This chapter will review and to an extent categorise the varying approaches that have formed the genesis of HBIM.

Some of these emergent approaches used GIS, including 3D data that could be used to reconstruct heritage visualisations. UNESCO (2002) held one of its 30th anniversary World Heritage conferences at the newly opened library in Alexandria, Egypt, focused on “Heritage Management Mapping, GIS and Multimedia”, at which there were a range of digital heritage projects described, including 3D GIS applications for both built and natural heritage (Counsell 2005). UNESCO (2003) then launched its “Charter for the Preservation of Digital Heritage”, claiming that “where resources are ‘born digital’, there is no other format but the digital original” that should be preserved. These digital materials include “texts, databases, still and moving images, audio, graphics, software, and web pages, among a wide and growing range of formats. They are frequently ephemeral, and require purposeful production, maintenance and management to be retained” (ibid.). A later UNESCO (2012) conference went beyond this, using the title of “The Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation”. This supports an argument for an HBIM deployable 3D reference system for all cultural heritage sites in order to maintain, manage, and view these diverse materials in context, with geospatial analytical tools to filter information or augment reality. In a similar vein, recent calls for wider stakeholder engagement in levels 2 and 3 BIM in the UK call for it to be described as “Digitising the built environment” or “Digital Built Britain” “and not BIM”! (Chawla 2015).

1.4 This book

The main thrust of this book is to identify how emerging and forecast technologies may be used to support better restoration philosophies; enhance data capture and management; widen public engagement; improve energy performance; and plan for and enhance resilience in the face of climate change and natural hazards. The book is comprised of four heritage themes following setting the scene for HBIM, including restoration philosophies in practice; data capture and visualisation for maintenance and repair; stakeholder engagement; and building performance.

In Setting the Scene for HBIM, Chapter 2 takes the viewpoint of a heritage practitioner in defining how HBIM can enhance management activities, while Chapter 3 discusses the goals of HBIM to determine progress to date and progress still required. Within the section on Restoration Philosophies in Practice, Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 explore restoration methods and philosophies in the context of HBIM. The chapters in Data Capture and Visualisation for Maintenance and Repair provide insights into data capture and modelling approaches using laser scanning, photogrammetry, and other means for HBIM modelling, visualisation, and heritage maintenance. This then leads into Building Performance. Chapters 14, 15, and 16 elaborate on the performance modelling of heritage buildings to inform planning to fully test and explore the impacts and outcomes and determine the sustainability of the resources required before implementation. In the final section on Stakeholder Engagement, in Chapters 17 and 18 there is discussion of how the public, local communities, and other stakeholders can be more inclusively engaged in collaborative heritage valuation and management, and how HBIM can facilitate this.

1.5 Conclusion

It is argued that the focus of HBIM should be primarily on realising the value and significance, and supporting the long-term sustainable conservation, of cultural heritage assets in the built environment for all stakeholders. There is little research literature that addresses such broad-scale user engagement in the specifications of or development of HBIM. There are a few published prototypes for Heritage-focused BIM that can be claimed to contrast with these definitions of ‘new construction BIM’, but there is little widespread use. Equally, there is little research literature that addresses the significantly differing requirements of Heritage-focused BIM from new construction BIM. It is argued, therefore, that this is an area worthy of study.

References

Britton, B.J. (1998). ‘LASCAUX Virtual Reality Project’. Online at: www.hamiltonarts.net/lascaux.html.

Cabinet Office (2012). ‘Government Construction Trial Projects July 2012’. Online at: www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk, www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/62628/Trial-Projects-July-2012.pdf.

Chawla, R. (2015). ‘Let’s Talk about Digitising the Built Environment’. Online at: www.bimplus.co.uk/people/lets-talk-about-digitising-built-environment/.

Counsell, J. (2005). ‘An approach to adding value while recording historic gardens and landscapes’ Chapter 19 (pp. 175–185) in ‘Digital Applications for Cultural and Heritage Institutions’ eds. Hemsley J.R., Cappelini V., Stanke G. Ashgate, Aldershot, England. ISBN: 0–7546–3359 4.

Eppich, Rand, and Chabbi, Amel (eds.) (2007). ‘Recording, Documentation and Information Management for the Conservation of Heritage Places: Illustrated Examples’. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/gci_pubs/recordim_vol2.

Murphy, M., McGovern, E., & Pavia, S. (2009). ‘Historic building information modelling (HBIM)’. Structural Survey Journal, 27(4), 311–327.

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Sutherland, I. (1963). ‘Sketchpad, a Man-Machine Graphical Communication System’. MIT. Online at: http://images.designworldonline.com.s3.amazonaws.com/CADhistory/Sketchpad_A_Man-Machine_Graphical_Communication_System_Jan63.pdf.

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UK Government (2015). ‘Digital built Britain level 3 building information modelling – strategic plan’. URN BIS/15/155 published by Department for Business Innovation & Skills. Online at: www.bis.gov.uk, www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/410096/bis-15–155-digital-built-britain-level-3-strategy.pdf.

UNESCO (2002). ‘Heritage Management Mapping, GIS and Multimedia’. whc.unesco.org/document/9202 & Markaz al-Qawmī li-Tawthīq al-Turāth al-Ḥaḍārī wa-al-Ṭabīʻī ‘Heritage Management Mapping: GIS and Multimedia, Alexandria, Egypt, October 21–23, 2002’. Egyptian Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage.

UNESCO (2003). ‘Concept of Digital Heritage’. Online at: www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/preservation-of-documentary-heritage/digital-heritage/concept-of-digital-heritage/.

UNESCO (2012). ‘The Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation’. Online at: www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/events/calendar-of-events/events-websites/the-memory-of-the-world-in-the-digital-age-digitization-and-preservation/.

Worthing, D., & Counsell, J. (1999). ‘Issues arising from computer-based recording of heritage sites’. Structural Survey Journal, 17(4), 200–210.