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Exploring Heritage Building Information Modelling for Conservation

by George Artopoulos

Exploring Heritage Building Information Modelling for Conservation

From July 6 to 18, 2025, I had the opportunity and the pleasure to spend two weeks as an ATRIUM TNA Individual Access fellow at the Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece. During my time at the AUEB, I worked on developing contributions to the recently established DARIAH EU Working Group ARChitectural HEritage Thesaurus through Integrated digital Procedures and Open data (ARCHETIPO), in terms of the use of Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) in built heritage conservation.

Aims and Context

Historic urban environments are not given static formations disconnected from the contemporary fabric of a city, but rather a set of tangible and intangible assets subjected to dynamic pressures of economic, environmental, and social activities. The sustainable development of these environments is often threatened by urbanization, neglect and climate.

The cross-disciplinary nature of the pressing challenges posed by these phenomena (Historic England 2020) requires the development of novel data-driven tools for agile safeguarding of our historic building stock. In an era of rapid technological developments due to digitization initiatives, state-of-the-art methods and data-driven tools dedicated to the protection and promotion of architectural heritage should be exploited and extensively employed in the sustainable management of built environment.

The use of Building Information Modelling software in the building industry is enabled by semantic tools, such as the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data model. Exploring specifications and metadata schemas to facilitate interdisciplinary research for the study and reuse of built heritage in historic neighbourhoods presents significant opportunities for novel contributions to the field. The aim of my visit to AUEB was to further explore the following topics with colleagues in ATRIUM and DARIAH EU:

  • Challenges and practical aspects of linking BIM metadata fields to appropriate built heritage schemata and standardised vocabularies; and,
  • How multiscale data-driven studies of built heritage enabled by HBIM can facilitate a more holistic, integrated application of digital methods that better contextualise cross-disciplinary enquiries (Cursi et al. 2022).

Activities and Collaboration

During my stay in Athens, I collaborated closely with colleagues at AUEB on the following parallel activities:

  • Reflecting on the FAIRness of existing implementations of BIM metadata standards and the needs of the communities of built heritage conservation in terms of data provenance;
  • Exploring existing metadata schemas such as bibliographic documentation or geoinformatics, that are required to be added to the BIM model in order to meet the specifications of a CIDOC-CRM based on ISO standards ISO21127:2014 (Acierno et al. 2017).

Outcomes and Next Steps

The results of my visit contributed to ongoing efforts conducted by the relevant ATRIUM (3D-HBIM workflow) and DARIAH WG communities including: Researchers and experts in Digital Humanities; Architects / Conservators; Cultural heritage Institutions; Technical operators and scholars with expert knowledge,to ensure dissemination to the most relevant communities to the topic and thus will accelerate potential synergies in the field.

The next step is the alignment of our metadata schema to a CIDOC CRM ontology and its extensions. The semantic integration will allow the holistic description of the different aspects of the Architectural Heritage and provide a multidisciplinary perspective to its study, including historical and landscape analysis, environmental investigations and climate change impact on its conservation and preservation.

Conclusion and Acknowledgements

The ATRIUM TNA fellowship helped me discuss about these key topics with relevant experts and reflect on the next steps required to further advanced my research in the field. I am grateful to the AUEB team (Professor P. Constantopoulos, Dr A. Benardou, M. Ilvanidou, V. Dritsou) for their constructive comments, productive discussions and warm hospitality that made my visit in Athens a very fruitful experience.

From July 6 to 18, 2025, I had the opportunity and the pleasure to spend two weeks as an ATRIUM TNA Individual Access fellow at the Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece.