Analysis and storage of the decay degree level, cracks and lack of material in timber built heritage for HBIM

Abstract

The conservation and management of timber built heritage is a task of utmost importance as they are present in several relevant buildings including national historic and cultural herit-age or even World Heritage buildings. In this concern, Historic Building Information Model-ling (HBIM) may be a fundamental tool of documentation. HBIM is often mentioned as a 3D digital representation (with an associated database) of the geometric, topological and seman-tic characteristics of a specific historic building. The information associated to this represen-tation and gathered within HBIM can be used for a more reliable decision process account-ing a life-cycle assessment. Besides the mentioned information, for timber structures is also of extreme importance to register the level of decay and damage which can be incorporated into a HBIM database. For this purpose, this work presents how the decay level (due to abiot-ic and biotic agents) and level of damage (cracks and lack of material) measured from laser scanner and drilling resistance tests can be analyzed and after stored in the associated HBIM database of a timber building. This data storage of the decay level and existing damage throughout different periods of time is a fundamental source of information in order to take sustainable and reliable decisions on the conservation, intervention and management of the built heritage of timber structures.