Open-oriented algorithmic approach for BIM modelling of complex historic water infrastructure

Abstract. The management of water resources has underpinned the history of settlement systems for centuries. The introduction of railways often led to neglect the previously fundamental hydraulic infrastructures that characterised the landscape. The “Naviglio” of the city of Pavia (Italy), an artificial water channel built to allow uphill navigation from Pavia to Milan, is the perfect example of a relevant historic infrastructure worth of management and refurbishment interventions. To this end, monitoring strategies and a digital ecosystem to implement them are required. Namely, the proposed methodological workflow integrates semi-automated modelling procedures for the fast development of a LOD 200 GeoBIM model of the “Naviglio” starting just from 2D cartographic data and literature information. The objective is indeed to set up a digital ecosystem, taking advantage of the strength of the BIM methodologies, optimised for implementing monitoring strategies both at architectural and urban scales. Furthermore, the approach seeks to employ open tools when possible, relying on a transferable parametrisation algorithm so as not to constrain further researchers to a specific BIM authoring tool.