H-BIM – Innovative and Digital Tools to Improve the Management of the Existing Buildings

With the introduction of the BIM methodology, the digitalization is consolidating mostly the process of new building design defining new standardized working procedures in order to optimize the data flow. On the contrary, pertaining to existing buildings, the rules are still dictated by the traditional methodology leading to fragmented and disaggregated information flow. However, some tools have been recently developed and are quickly upgrading to meet the specific aim to pursue progress, dynamism and experimentation in order to stay in tune with market demands. One common issue, is due to the fact that the documents are paper, hard to find and numerous so that the digitalization represents the best real solution to improve their management. In this regard, the heart of the informative flow is represented by the Common Data Environment (CDE), a cloud storage in which the documents are collected once uploaded and easily manageable with specific platforms. By way of example, a case study is developed in the paper in which the management process of the H-BIM of the XV century’s structure placed in the old town of Naples is carried out in a digital way, through the usBIM.platform (released by ACCA software company) using specific tools, like links, markers and tags. The goal of the paper is to define both a new organization for the data archive, in which the documents are structured and easily traceable, both a new way of conceiving the BIM model that it is thought as an informative vehicle and a key access to the information rather than a mere geometric representation

Experimental bond behaviour of GFRP and masonry bricks under impulsive loading

Fibre Reinforced Polymers have become a popular material for strengthening of masonry structures. The performance of this technique is strongly dependent on the bond between the FRP and the substrate. Understanding the strain rate effect on these materials and strengthening techniques is important for proper design and proper modelling of these systems under impacts or blast loads. This work aims to study the behaviour of the bond between GFRP and brick at different strain rates. A Drop Weight Impact Machine specially developed for pull-off tests (single shear tests) is used with different masses and different heights introducing different deformation rates. The strain rate effect on the failure mode, shear capacity and effective bond length is determined from the experimental results. Empirical relations of dynamic increase factors (DIF) for these materials and techniques are also presented.This work was performed under Project CH-SECURE (PTDC/EMC/120118/2010) funded by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology – FCT. The authors acknowledge the support. The first author also acknowledges the support from his PhD FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/45436/2008

Building information modeling and artificial intelligence: Advanced technologies for the digitalisation of seismic damage in existing buildings

This research, which is based on the digital technologies building information modeling (BIM) and artificial intelligence, describes achievements in the field of detecting, assessing, and digitalising damage in existing buildings. The purpose of the study is to highlight the potential and current benefits of combining structural-assessment methods with the automatic digitisation of hazard-induced damage in affected buildings. To this end, the aforementioned technologies are employed in the form of an image-based recognition-BIM classification technique applied to on-site visual-damage data. By extending the methodology to existing masonry and concrete buildings, the results obtained open up new opportunities for speeding up the process of assessing, designing, and managing seismic repair/retrofit interventions using image data acquired in the manner described

Potential of structural pozzolanic matrix–hemp fiber grid composites

Currently, sustainability represents a primary issue for construction industry. New material and technological solutions are widely proposed and investigated to meet sustainability requirements and natural fibers represent one of the most studied materials. The work presented here investigated the mechanical behavior of a sustainable composite system made by pozzolanic mortar reinforced with hemp fiber grids. To improve the durability of the system and in particular of the fibers in the pozzolanic mortar environment a latex coating was used. The objective of the study was to investigate the mechanical behavior of the proposed composite system and assess the feasibility of using the system for structural retrofit applications on existing structures. A mechanical characterization of the fibers was conducted and the effectiveness of the latex coating in improving the durability of the fibers was investigated. The mechanical behavior of the composite system was studied, through a three-point bending test program

LCA-Based Comparison of the Environmental Impact of Different Structural Systems

Construction is one of the most impactful industrial sector because of the high consequences it generates on the society, the environment and the economy. The study presented herein aims to define a methodological framework that can be used for construction community stakeholders in order to conduct environmental sustainability comparisons among building systems at the design stage. An application of the methodology is performed by comparing structures having different building materials. Three alternative material options have been investigated: RC, steel, and wood. Each option has been designed to fulfill predefined structural, functional, and architectural requirements. Later, the environmental impacts of the structures have been assessed according to the four steps of the life-cycle assessment procedure (ISO 14040) and considering the four phases of a building life: extraction and processing of raw materials; construction; operation; end of life. LCA study is conducted for the three alternative structures with the help of SimaPro software, using both IMPACT2002+ and EPD2008 methodologies to quantify environmental impacts

Assessment of Urban Ecosystem Resilience through Hybrid Social-Physical Complex Networks

One of the most important tasks of urban and hazard planning is to mitigate the damages and minimize the costs of the recovery process after catastrophic events. In this context, the capability of urban systems and communities to recover from disasters is referred to as resilience. Despite the problem of resilience quantification having received a lot of attention, a mathematical definition of the resilience of an urban community, which takes into account the social aspects of an urban environment, has not yet been identified. In this article, we provide and test a methodology for the assessment of urban resilience to catastrophic events which aims at bridging the gap between the engineering and the ecosystem approaches to resilience. We propose to model an urban system by means of different hybrid social-physical complex networks, obtained by enriching the urban street network with additional information about the social and physical constituents of a city, namely citizens, residential buildings, and services. Then, we introduce a class of efficiency measures on these hybrid networks, inspired by the definition of global efficiency given in complex network theory, and we show that these measures can be effectively used to quantify the resilience of an urban system, by comparing their respective values before and after a catastrophic event and during the reconstruction process. As a case study, we consider simulated earthquakes in the city of Acerra, Italy, and we use these efficiency measures to compare the ability of different reconstruction strategies in restoring the original performance of the urban syste