Part VDigital Technologies for Multi-Scale Survey and Analysis

Introduction

Bruno Daniotti, Marco Gianinetto

Surveying a historical building, monument or place means measuring and analyzing its geometries, structural elements and connections to evaluate its state of conservation, to make structural analysis or to plan a proper project of conservation, consolidation or reuse. Thus, the survey is the very first step for their knowledge investigation.

This section describes the outcomes of some relevant reseach activities related to digital survey technologies of the built environment at different territorial scales, from that of large historical monuments to that of their surroundings and landscape. Specifically, the case histories of the Cathedral of Milan (Duomo di Milano) and Saint Mark’s Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) in Venice describe the technical development of the digital survey techniques for cultural and historical heritage during the last decade. The sinergy of traditional and cutting-edge survey approaches made possible to build a digital replica of two of the most famous churches in the world, which are today used for both documentation and conservation of these exceptional monuments.

Moving to the urban scale, this section shows how the cross-referencing of geo-databases and national census data can be used to map the energy demand of city districts and how this information then becomes the input for modeling energy upgrading scenarios towards smart energy district. Finally, aircraft and satellite survey technologies are typically used when analysing very large areas. In this case, geo-information made of big data and massive measures should be managed, thus automatic algorithms for their analysis becomes a must. In this regard, this section describes from a theoretical point of view how to implement automatic geocoding workflows of digital data and some case studies for mapping at the territorial scale complement the dissertation.

The common threads of this section are the technologies of Geomatics, such as web-based Geographic Information Systems and Building Information Modeling for cultural and historical heritage. Both use a set of tools to allow the handling, updating and analysis of different digital data to monitor their conservation state, planning the intervention of restoration and conservation, storing the data and sharing all these information among the experts involved. This section outlines the results of the several research activities carried out on these topics, including the significant case histories of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy (North Italy), devotional paths part of the UNESCO World Heritage list, and Basilica of Collemaggio in L’Aquila and Basilica of Saint Ambrose in Milan.