Data Acquisition in Cultural Heritage Buildings Using Non-destructive Techniques, and Its Gathering with BIM—The Case Study of the Gothic Monastery of Batalha in Portugal

This paper presents an interdisciplinary approach that combines different types of information, gathered by different techniques, about one façade of the Founder’s Chapel of the Monastery of Batalha at Leiria, which was collected into a Building Information Modelling (BIM) model. Non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques play an important role in the characterization and diagnosis level of historic buildings, having in view their conservation and possible rehabilitation. The surface geometry and spectral properties of the façade of the chapel were determined using a camera mounted on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and a fixed thermal imaging camera. To complement this information, a Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) was employed to investigate the interior of the façade. The visible anomalies of the façade were subject to different classification approaches. All the gathered information, properly georeferenced was fed to a 3D model supported by BIM. In this paper, the employed data acquisition techniques are described and their optimization and treatment through the BIM approach are discussed. The gathering of different types of data, some of which not commonly included in more conventional applications of BIM, as well as the lack of object libraries which cover the various architectural details of historic buildings, were the primary difficulties.