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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes an integrated, holistic and multi-scalar methodology to address the theme of energy efficiency of historic fabrics, supported by the use of technologies in the field of Heritage BIM, numerical simulations and decision support systems, carried out in the old town of Frigento in Italy. Both at the urban and the building scale, a combination of traditional and innovative analyses were integrated into a Heritage-BIM platform of the historic centre. The use of ICT technologies helped to improve interoperability between Heritage-BIM and numerical simulations to streamline the operational workflow by avoiding redundant steps through the use of computational design and graphical algorithmic modelling as an intermediate step between the two software environments. The Analytical Hierarchy Process, a Multicriteria analysis application tool, based on four key criteria (compatibility with restoration principles, economic affordability, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability), was used to select the best retrofit solution for a pilot historical building among a set of alternatives proposed by the research and design team, including all the stakeholders involved in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]