HBIM-Based Decision-Making Approach for Sustainable Diagnosis and Conservation of Historical Timber Structures

Historical timber roofs play a significant role in architectural heritage, as listed in the World Heritage List protected by UNESCO. Despite their complexity, they are frequently lacking in maintenance, with the consequence that only a few original examples have been preserved until today, contradicting the principle of minimum intervention. In the paper, a decision-making approach has been proposed for the best and most sustainable solution, in which tradition and innovation meet to achieve the maximum quality with minimum intervention. With an emphasis on sustainability (environmental, economic, technological, historic, and social), analyses have been carried out in order to compare various intervention alternatives, modeled in a Heritage-Building Information Modeling (HBIM) environment, assessed using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and implemented with the multi-criteria Modelo Integrado de cuantificacion de Valor para Edificacion Sostenibles (MIVES) methodology. The case study is the roof of the Michelangelo Cloister in the Diocletian Baths in Rome, which is a significant example of historical timber roofs. The results are given in terms of a quantitative sustainability index SI, which takes into account different alternatives of intervention, including the task of diagnosis.