From LIDAR data towards HBIM for energy analysis

Abstract

Knowledge about heritage buildings and structures is interesting for a wide variety of stakeholders, ranging from architects to operators or the public administration. Such knowledge includes a large variety of physical and functional characteristics of the building. Laser scanning allows efficient and accurate 3D digitalization of heritage sites and subsequent data processing towards the creation of geometrically and semantically rich models. Parameterization and semantic enrichment of heritage building representations towards the creation of Heritage Building Information Models (HBIM) generally involves the use of point clouds and images as templates for manual mapping procedures in commercial software. Indeed, the information to include in BIM models depends on the requirements of the application it is intended to serve. In view of that, the applications presented in this chapter pertain to automated techniques that were implemented to parameterize point clouds towards models suitable for energy analysis purposes. The challenge in automating the reconstruction of heritage buildings is to deal with their geometrical complexity and irregularity, meaning that the methodologies selected should be robust and efficient under these conditions. The resulting 3D semantically rich model enhances the knowledge of the heritage building, complementing other representations of the facility such as point clouds or handmade HBIM. The procedure is implemented and validated in a real case study: the Ducal Palace in Guimarães (Portugal).