Development and Application of an Intelligent Modeling Process for Heritage Masonry Structures in BIM Applications: Literature Review

The Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) technology for historic and heritage masonry buildings has recently expanded in response to urgent conservation and structural analysis needs. The masonry structures of ancient architectural construction have a unique cultural, spiritual, and historical significance. However, there is a lack of research concerning the reliability of the recent HBIM modeling process of these structures. This process confronts major challenges due to the inherent complexity and uniqueness of the heritage masonry structures. It is primarily based on tracing the point clouds and infrequently adheres to documents, archival records, or direct observation. This method produces highly abstract models with an accuracy that doesn’t go beyond LOD 200. Masonry assemblies, particularly curved elements such as arches, vaults, and domes, are typically modeled with standard BIM components or in-place models, and brick textures are input graphically. Hence, future investigation is necessary to establish a methodology to automatically generate parametric masonry components for these structures. These components should be developed algorithmically in accordance with the mathematical and geometrical accuracy and validity of the survey data. The main goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the state of the art of literature that has been conducted on the HBIM modeling of the heritage masonry structural elements. It investigates the latest approaches that have been applied to obtain parametric models that have both high visual fidelity and high geometrical accuracy. The paper examined over 700 articles, with proceedings papers from 2017 to 2021 focusing on the keywords “HBIM and Masonry.” The co-occurrence bibliometric method was used to analyze these publications after they were downloaded from reputable, well-known bibliographic databases. The analysis was performed using VOSviewer software, which extracts the main keywords from these publications to retrieve the relevant works. Subsequently, the literature, most closely related to the subject and the highest frequency of occurrence was assessed through the qualitative review. In the qualitative review phase, the latest approaches and the future suggestions proposed in these publications were collected, which can be a valuable reference for researchers and BIM specialists who are interested in developing the modeling process of historic masonry structures.