Articles by Andrea Scianna

Recent technological evolutions in the acquisition and management of building data are offering new opportunities for digital reconstruction. At the same time, the BIM (Building Information Modeling) methodology, based on the implementation of libraries composed of parametric objects provided by the IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) standard, allows the design and management of data of existing buildings, and, in particular, historical and archaeological buildings. In the latter case, the great variety of Cultural Heritage (CH) distributed over the European territory, and the ability of BIM to cover the life of buildings or/and other artefacts from a geometric, descriptive, physical and static point of view, have stimulated the development of the HBIM (Historic BIM) modelling. The HBIM approach should consider the complexity of historical or archaeological buildings or artefacts, with particular attention to possible fragmentation or incompleteness of parts. In this work, different approaches regarding the survey, restitution and data management will be described, finalised to the construction of an HBIM model, considering different possible variables, emerging from different study cases.

This paper illustrates a step in the research that the GISLab (CNR-UNIPA) has been conducting on the development of informative systems for Cultural Heritage. In particular, it shows a methodology used to describe archaeological sites through 3D models integrated with databases. Models are implemented with BIM software. They are made searchable through the connection with a Relational Database Management System and shareable on the web. The case study, analyzed in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma (SSBAR), concerns an application on the Roman structures found in the Crypt of the Church of SS. Sergio e Bacco in Rome. The BIM application we experimented also shows how to use in the archaeological field semantic and parametric solid modeling integrated with 3D standardized and all-inclusive databases that are finally manageable in the public cloud.

In the last ten years there have been several steps ahead towards the GIS 3D, in particular for the visualization of 3D objects within a GIS; few, instead, are the prototypes of GIS systems operating in 3D. The use of 3D Pdf is an intermediate solution that uses an open format such as .pdf and a series of free and open source software like Blender and PostgreSQL-PostGIS combined with programming languages such as Python and scripting languages such as Javascript. The aim of this paper is to describe a procedure for the interaction between a 3D model and a 2D geographic database. The opportunity to experiment with 3D Pdf was the subject of the Master thesis Tecnologie avanzate di rilevamento, rappresentazione e diagnostica per la conservazione e la fruizione dei beni culturali at the University of Palermo; a survey and a study of the Castle of Maredolce is described and the data that were employed to create a product for the public use of the Castle.

The diffusion of the use of Geographical Information Systems in archaeology has considerably increased in recent years. This multiplicity of applications is due mainly to the growing interest of archaeologists in modern methodologies for the management of archaeological data, surveyed by topographic, photogrammetric and remote sensing techniques. GIS have become a fundamental tool for managing, sharing, analyzing and visualizing spatially referenced data and they are completely substituting the traditional techniques used by archaeologists, based upon filling out forms, graphics and other paper documents. Besides in the modern global society, dominated by mass media such as Internet, the issue of utilization has become more and more important, and most of the more recent GIS applications (Multimedia GIS, WebGIS) take this aspect into consideration.