The architectural engineering and construction sector accounts for about 30-40% of global energy consumption. The European goal of reducing this consumption and the linked greenhouse gas emissions calls for an increased capacity to implement building renovations. Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Building Performance Simulations (BPS) are among the most promising tools for fostering interdisciplinary, efficient processes and feasible analysis and design solutions to support this goal. Of the whole building stock, heritage buildings represent the most challenging part, although their potential as a driver for mitigating climate change and supporting sustainable development is being increasingly recognized. This paper presents a Heritage BIM and BPS-based workflow to support the energy and environmental improvement of publicly-owned historical buildings, that was applied to 9 case studies of 7 different Mediterranean countries. The overall aim of this research is to enhance the capacity of public local administrations and professionals to upgrade the historical building stock and demonstrate the scalability of the proposed workflow to the entire building stock of the Mediterranean area.

The heterogeneity and historical complexity of interventions on built heritage are testified by the constant development of the conservation discipline. The purpose of the research is the development of a digital workflow of parametric modelling for the analysis and conservation of historical buildings, by applying visual programming language (VPL) to support the Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) methodology. VPL represents a tool for explicit parametric modelling that can be used to enhance geometric and information enrichment of HBIM models. The paper describes the integration, within an HBIM-VPL process, of the Index of Masonry Quality, widely used for seismic structural analysis, and its application to a case study in Cornillo Nuovo, a village damaged by the earthquake of Amatrice in 2016. Similar approaches could enhance HBIM modelling to support different knowledge domains associated with built heritage.

Built heritage energy and environmental improvement is increasingly being recognised as a key driver in the fight against climate change. This effort necessitates a thorough understanding of the building to guide the selection of technologies and design solutions. To have a picture of the buildings’ characteristics and behaviour that is as complete as possible, in situ studies are essential, although the complexities and heterogeneities of historical buildings make these analyses still challenging, especially in professional practice. To address these issues, the paper describes an integrated approach including the field application of Non-Destructive Techniques (namely, Heat Flow Meter measurements, Infrared thermographies and indoor environmental monitoring) within a Heritage Building Information Modelling process. This interdisciplinary/integrated approach fostered the use of each type of analysis’s results to guide the subsequent analyses and incrementally deepen the knowledge of the building. The methodology was applied to a case study in the historical city centre of Rome in Italy. The analyses will be of service in developing dynamic building performance simulations to support the design of the interventions.