AIDaBIM: artificial intelligence to assess structural/seismic DAmage to historic heritage in a building information modeling environment

This chapter presents the AIDaBIM project that is being developed at the University of Napoli Federico II, Italy, under the support of the Italian Ministry of University and Research. The project is focused on the investigation of masonry churches with structural and/or seismic damage, to develop a novel digital tool for the semi-automatic damage assessment, supporting conservation and management activities for such heritage assets. By using advanced technologies, such as building information modelling (BIM) and artificial intelligence (AI), a novel methodology is proposed to digitize the process of detection of the observed structural/seismic damage to churches and to define reliable and quick assessments of the related damage states. This methodology is mainly aimed at reducing the uncertainties related to the subjective interpretation of damage, together with time and costs to define a reliable damage pattern, but also at the definition of a novel heritage BIM (HBIM) model with additional damage information retrieved by AI processes to support decision-making phases and capable to be adapted for structural analysis and design of strengthening interventions.