The concept of a digital twin has been used in some industries where an accurate digital model of the equipment can be used for predictive maintenance. The use of a digital twin for performance is critical, and for capital-intensive equipment such as jet engines it proved to be successful in terms of cost savings and reliability improvements. In this paper, we aim to study the expansion of the digital twin in including building life cycle management and explore the benefits and shortcomings of such implementation. In four rounds of experimentation, more than 25,000 sensor reading instances were collected, analyzed, and utilized to create and test a limited digital twin of an office building facade element. This is performed to point out the method of implementation, highlight the benefits gained from digital twin, and to uncover some of the technical shortcomings of the current Internet of Things systems for this purpose.

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Digital Twin: Vision, Benefits, Boundaries, and Creation for Buildings

Many projects concerning the protection, conservation, restoration, and dissemination of cultural heritage are being carried out around the world due to its growing interest as a driving force of socio-economic development. The existence of reliable, digital three-dimensional (3D) models that allow for the planning and management of these projects in a remote and decentralized way is currently a growing necessity. There are many software tools to perform the modeling and complete three-dimensional documentation of the intervened monuments. However, the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sector has adopted the Building Information Modeling (BIM) standard over the last few decades due to the progress that has been made in its qualities and capabilities. The complex modeling of cultural heritage through commercial BIM software leads to the consideration of the concept of Heritage BIM (H-BIM), which pursues the modeling of architectural elements, according to artistic, historical, and constructive typologies. In addition, H-BIM is considered to be an emerging technology that enables us to understand, document, advertize, and virtually reconstruct the built heritage. This article is a review of the existing literature on H-BIM and its effective implementation in the cultural heritage sector, exploring the effectiveness and the usefulness of the different methodologies that were developed to model families of elements of interest.

A Review of Heritage Building Information Modeling (H-BIM)

In order to consider green roofs as an environmentally friendly technology, the selection of efficient and sustainable components is extremely important. Previous review papers have mainly focused on the performance and advantages of green roofs. The objective of this paper is to examine the primary layers: The waterproof and anti-root membranes; the protection, filter, and drainage layers; the substrate; and the vegetation. First, the history, modern applications, benefits and classification are analyzed in order to present a well-defined state of the art of this technology. Then, the roles, requirements, characteristics, and materials are assessed for each green roof layers. This technology was compared to a conventional roof technology, Mediterranean climate conditions and their influence on green roof design were assessed, also comparing them with Tropical area and focusing on irrigation systems, examples about the commercial materials and products available in the market were provided and innovative materials coming from recycled sources were analyzed. Future research should evaluate new materials for green roof technologies, in order to enhance their performance and increase their sustainability. The information provided in this review paper will be useful to develop Mediterranean green roof guidelines for selecting suitable components and materials during the design and installation phases.

Green Roof Design: State of the Art on Technology and Materials

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have become of considerable private and commercial interest for a variety of jobs and entertainment in the past 10 years. This paper is a literature review of the state of practice for the United States bridge inspection programs and outlines how automated and unmanned bridge inspections can be made suitable for present and future needs. At its best, current technology limits UAS use to an assistive tool for the inspector to perform a bridge inspection faster, safer, and without traffic closure. The major challenges for UASs are satisfying restrictive Federal Aviation Administration regulations, control issues in a GPS-denied environment, pilot expenses and availability, time and cost allocated to tuning, maintenance, post-processing time, and acceptance of the collected data by bridge owners. Using UASs with self-navigation abilities and improving image-processing algorithms to provide results near real-time could revolutionize the bridge inspection industry by providing accurate, multi-use, autonomous three-dimensional models and damage identification.

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Bridge inspection: human performance, unmanned aerial systems and automation

Digital twin and its implementations in the civil engineering sector

Historic Building Information Modelling: performance assessment for diagnosis-aided information modelling and management

Resilience of Historic Built Environments: Inherent Qualities and Potential Strategies☆

Methodological framework for assessment of energy behavior of historic towns in Mediterranean climate

Many countries, especially in southern Europe, are greatly exposed to seismic hazard, which is the cause of severe damage in historical buildings or even destruction in the case of strong earthquake ground motions. The recent experience of Italian seismic events (Umbria and Marche 1997, Puglia and Molise 2002, Abruzzo 2009, Emilia 2012) has highlighted the behavior, the damage and the intrinsic vulnerability of monumental buildings. Historical and monumental constructions are characterized by an inherent vulnerability to seismic action, due to the circumstance that most of them frequently lack basic seismic features and/or were never fitted with adequate provisions against earthquake actions. This entails the need to define urgent strategies for the protection of cultural heritage from seismic hazard. This paper deals with the structural monitoring and seismic assessment of a unique masonry tower in a Apulia region in southern Italy: the bell tower of “Santa Maria di San Luca” in the city of Valenzano. This monument was monitored by means of full-scale environmental vibration testing. Measured responses were then used for modal identification. The assessment procedure includes morphological and structural knowledge, full-scale ambient vibration testing, modal identification from ambient vibration responses, finite element modeling, dynamic-based identification of the model. A satisfactory improvement in modal parameters is so obtained, resulting in a close agreement between the modal properties observed in dynamic tests and those calculated from a numerical model. Nonlinear dynamic analysis allows to identify the potential collapse mechanisms and those dangerous structural weak points which may play a fundamental role in the seismic vulnerability of the towers.

Dynamic identification and evaluation of the seismic safety of a masonry bell tower in the south of italy

The paper is going to discuss a methodological workflow, focused on the role of photoscanning-based immersive environments and three-dimensional models as tools for sharing, interpreting and elaborating diagnostic data for the assessment and control of the state of conservation of the architectural heritage. Specifically, from the identification of fields and aims, where the available tools and functionalities meet the support needs by the stakeholders, some experimental applications are developed with reference to two main aspects. The former concerns the creation of virtual tours of panoramic scenes, enriched by data from preliminary investigation, in order to enable the coordinated and integrated fruition of the pre-diagnosis qualification outcome. The latter relates to the employment of image treatment routines on coloured point clouds with the purpose of carrying out semi-automatic operations of decay monitoring for post-diagnosis control.

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Mariella De Fino

Papers

Historic Building Information Modelling: performance assessment for diagnosis-aided information modelling and management

Resilience of Historic Built Environments: Inherent Qualities and Potential Strategies☆

Methodological framework for assessment of energy behavior of historic towns in Mediterranean climate

Dynamic identification and evaluation of the seismic safety of a masonry bell tower in the south of italy

Remote diagnosis and control of the heritage Architecture by photorealistic digital environments and models