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Working beyond the boundaries of known practices is a vital and essential activity for the researcher’s work.

An activity that requires a double ability for vision and innovation: one aimed at identifying the areas to be innovated; the other addressed to conceive new tools and methodologies to investigate them. For the past 50 years the digital aid has become widespread in every scientific field, declined in multiple instruments that we could define today of “common use”. On closer inspection, those who develop these tools seem to have always been aware that these were insufficient, tools not completely suitable to cover every need.

In fact, an open door to vertical customization has always been present within them, that is, the development of dedicated solutions to go beyond common operations. This fantastic freedom has never been – fully understood by the multitude of users – and still is not today; users who tended to interpret the personalization of digital tools by means of software development, instead of understanding the space of operational freedom offered by this opportunity, as an activity intended only for experienced users and of a purely technical nature. The growing computer literacy and digital knowledge, make the potential of software development more accessible to a multitude of “curious” researchers every day.

On this path a great help has come from the visual programming language that makes possible to solve problems by computer operating at the level of definition of the algorithmic solution of the problem, without going down into the syntactic and grammatical complexity characteristic of programming languages.

Block programming has recently entered fully into the creative spaces of our disciplinary know-how, approaching coding practices to something more similar to the modelling languages to which we are most naturally predisposed. The manipulation of the blocks has immediate effects on the generation of the form and offers versatile potentialities of access to all.

It is a “learning by doing” or training game that can free up infinite forms of in-depth analysis of the existing as a prefiguration or simulation of a future that is always different and declined case by case, in total conceptual freedom.

For this reason the Call for Papers to which this issue was dedicated wanted to investigate the concepts of “space grammar & procedural modelling” dedicated to the design of the new and to the survey of the existing .

The selected papers are for us representatives of original ideas, experiments and real applications at different scales, from the small one of industrial design to the large one of urban analysis and design, which together provide useful indications on the state of the art and on creativity in the construction of complex models, by means of personalized digital processing procedures.

In their sharing these procedure can open other ways to other generative methods in a multiplication of forms and experiments that are always new and increasingly interesting.

It is our wish that it could be possible to dedicate with recurrence an issue of the magazine Dn to this theme, we are full convicted that from the solutions to the singular needs, it is possible to significantly innovate the research methodologies , the work tools and – in this specific – the design of the new and the survey of the existing at the different scales.

C. Bolognesi, G.M. Valenti

Legislative Decree 18 April 2016, n. 50, art. 23 Paragraph 13 (design levels for contracts, works and services), the so-called MIT decree (Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport), literally reads: “The contracting entities may require for new works as well as for recovery, refurbishment or variations, primarily for complex works, the use of specific electronic methods and tools referred to in subparagraph 1(h). These tools make use of interoperable platforms by means of open formats, in order not to restrict competition among technology providers and the use of specific planning tools by designers. The use of electronic methods and instruments can be requested only by the contracting entities with properly trained staff (omissis)”.
This is the transposition of the Community Directive 2014/24/EU of the European Parliament and the Council of 26 February 2014.

After about a year, in 2017, the legislative implementing policy is being defined. It is the direct outcome of the measure referred to above (predictably, as a Decree of the Ministry of Infrastructure). Two presumably effective tools are emerging: one is more operational and provides for a national standardization, while the second one is more informative and promotional:
– UNI 11337:2017 (published in several parts, nearing completion);
– The Handbook for the introduction of Building Information Modeling by the European Public Sector. Strategic action for construction sector performance: driving value, innovation and growth published by the EUBIM Taskgroup.

The Building Information Modeling (BIM), along with the above-mentioned standards and recommendations, is therefore recognized as the key information tool for digitalization in the construction sector.
Francesco Ruperto, an expert in this field, says: “Both the MIT decree and the BIM Handbook, a document of reference for the European public demand, identify common and increasingly organized methods to enable a public entity to implement BIM processes in its own organization given their significance with respect to the requirements included in the tender specifications”.
After identifying the common methods of BIM processes, it is necessary to define their qualitative characteristics. Is BIM procedure identical in every intervention area? Why some permutations of Information Modeling are becoming popular, e.g. HBIM (Heritage BIM), LIM (Landscape Information Modeling), GeoBIM (Geospatial BIM), SeismicBIM, etc.? Can we identify virtuous procedures or are there considerable variations from one area to another?
The support offered by various forms of representation to sophisticated knowledge and ideation processes is gaining popularity within increasingly integrated and interconnected computing environments that are gradually overcoming the mere paper-based format. Representation results from an orderly or orderable system of elements that together establish relations, matches, dependencies.
The digital information modeling is the container and, at the same time, the content of knowledge-promoting data. It is shaping its own founding paradigms for a continuously evolving context that affects both the legislative framework in the field of public works and methods and technological tools.
Today, increasingly large skill-based working teams face, through the constant updating of standards and procedures, several challenges that in turn broaden the horizon of possibilities. It is therefore important to have an up-to-date state-of-the-art, built through good practices and the most advanced experience, both in the professional field and in that of theoretical and applied research. This will be used for comparisons or personalized replications.
The research is complemented by increasingly frequent BIM meetings, both at a national and international level, open to academics, professionals, public and private operators. It is worth mentioning a few of them, such as: Workshop 3D Modeling & BIM in 2016 and 2017 held at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome; Brainstorming BIM, held at the Faculty of Architecture of Politecnico of Milan in 2016; BIM and HBIM between Research and Profession, Federazione degli Ordini degli Ingegneri dell’Umbria, Ordine degli Ingegneri of the Province of Perugia and Terni, at UmbriaFiere in Bastia Umbra; Digital & BIM Italy, 2017, at Fair of Bologna.
BIM integrates and is supplemented by other approaches based on specific IT technologies: GIS (Geographic Information System), web, mobile applications, Database Management Systems (DBMS); computer languages linking together the various parts of the building process become the universe of reference for the magazine Dn. Out of the existing trade publications, this new magazine represents a unique experience at national level. It addresses specific themes through an unprecedented analytical approach. It discusses sophisticated and interoperable processes and presents a varied selection of methods, technologies and instruments clearly defined to “build right and allow people to live”.
It aims at becoming a critical reference for a heterogeneous public, composed of researchers and operators in the field of construction; an investigation and comparison tool where professionals, experts and researchers may discuss, propose solutions or share and illustrate the path followed in the definition of individual projects.

The first issue presents a collection of the most interesting scientific contributions arising from the above mentioned training activities. The magazine content is quite diversified. It presents exploratory approaches in the field of H-BIM, aimed at a correct digitization of historical heritage, semantically intelligent, with interesting methodological insights; a number of virtuous examples of good practices for the implementation of major building interventions characterized by marked process innovations, a description of operational proposals and related applications in the managing/maintenance area. These contributions reflect an integrated methodological approach that should allow preserving, looking up and updating the information heritage in accordance with interoperable operational processes and a strongly collaborative spirit.

T. Empler, M. Lo Turco

Until a few years ago, talking about BIM or H-BIM was a subject dealt with by the few brave pioneers specializing in designing on an international scale; today the BIM approach has become a “must” of planning, rehabilitation, re-functionalization, restoration, recovery, etc.
The use of BIM techniques has had such an increase, sensitizing researchers to experiment with new and more effective applications. The solicitations that constantly come from the professional world, have opened a very wide window in the CH field; both with regard to its problems and ways of overcoming them.
And although the field of cultural heritage is the confluence of the largest number of trials, the engineering fields have also turned their attention to BIM applications. This includes road engineering, hydraulic engineering, railway engineering, structural and energy engineering; in short, to all the sectors involved in a Smart City, which today more than ever, needs a Smart BIM methodology.
The ability to query a three-dimensional model to extrapolate all the information needed for new interventions on a work, optimizes timing and results of the operations to be performed. The BIM paths become increasingly rich and articulated and open to meet the needs of all those practitioners that are involved in a structure built or to be built, in a good state of conservation or to restructure, restore, recover, etc.
Think of the electrical and hydraulic systems, the structural system, the furnishings, the closing elements, the materials used, etc. Obviously, the more complex the information structure to be set out, the more complex the algorithm that supports this scaffolding becomes.
An extremely vast subject and, for that reason, it lends itself to misunderstandings that are not always easy to identify. In addition to frequent misunderstandings, difficulties are encountered in trying to integrate data related to models made with different software. It appears, therefore, that interoperability is a problem in practice much more complex than claimed at the theoretical level.
In this issue of the Dn journal, there are 8 articles that allow the reader to learn both the state of the advances in literature, the operations of new mathematical algorithms and the computational designs that, thanks to the experiments conducted, allow more and more new applications. BIM techniques are often adopted to solve the difficulties related to the management of production / construction / intervention / construction / sustainability costs.
In this issue there are some works that deal with BIM under other aspects in very different contexts; with characteristics and needs sometimes in contrast and this allows us to be able to understand some essential aspects that become a paradigm, an archetype of operating methodologies.
Furthermore, the BIM experimentation in the GIS field is very timely so as to obtain the territorial data for the development of City Information Modelling (CIM) using open source data and geospatial surveys.
A need that has arisen spontaneously as the BIM system has entered into the design and redevelopment of the building, is that of the need to codify a new parameter, the Level of Reliability, which takes into account both the geometric and semantic-ontological reliability of the model with respect to the reality it intends to describe. Hence the need to code a set of shared and repeatable parameters to arrive at a numerical evaluation of LOR synthesis, which is understood as the level of global coherence of the process of defining a digital object.
One of the goals that BIM scholars and experimenters intend to achieve is that of remote application directly in-situ. In this way, you have the ability to update in real time, make any changes, annotate considerations, identify points of fragility or strength, etc. and see the system’s response on the server. Moreover, through the application of the computational design it is possible to speed up and improve the realization of complex geometries typical of historical architecture and to automate some processes during the design phase.
Exploring the new frontiers of BIM through the use of algorithmic tools for the control of the formal and informative aspects of the project represents, today, a real revolution in terms of the optimization of the tangled and sometimes indestructible machine for the design of building structures and civil infrastructures.

Laura Inzerillo, Francesco Ruperto