The Use of a Building Information Model to Support Seismic Analysis: Application to the National Palace of Sintra, Portugal

This work presents an application of a Building Information Model (BIM) to the National Palace of Sintra, Portugal, a large and complex building composed of different unreinforced masonry buildings that is included in the Cultural Landscape of Sintra, classified under the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1995. The developed H-BIM (Heritage Building Information Modelling) model has the ability to provide the geometric information of the structure of the building, together with its descriptive attributes, such as the mechanical characterization of the building materials, as inputs to the seismic structural analysis. The results of such analyses are also stored as attributes within the H-BIM model, providing an integrated platform usable by the building management. Geometric data was acquired using a Faro Focus(s) 70, together with a Topcon Falcon 8+ UAV. The methodology applied in the construction of the H-BIM model was implemented with Autodesk Revit (R) software. Since the Palace is very complex, its seismic behaviour was studied for the different building units, considering the effect of the adjacent ones, and performing nonlinear static analyses through 3Muri software.