Retrofitting Heritage Buildings: Aligning Heritage Building Information Management with DIN Standards

Heritage buildings require continuous maintenance and adaptation to modern needs. However, decision-making processes for their retrofitting are often hindered by fragmented documentation and inaccessible data. This paper proposes integrating the information requirements provided by the DIN standards for conservation, sustainability, energy efficiency, condition assessment, a nd risk management in heritage buildings into Heritage Building Information Management (HBIM) models. The goal is to improve the availability and exchange of information between stakeholders to streamline decision-making processes. To this end, four DIN standards are analyzed to identify key attributes required. The objective is to explore how to incorporate these attributes into HBIM models to serve as structured repositories for preventive documentation. Integrating these standards into the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema, which structures the information in the HBIM models, allows for a more proactive approach to retrofitting and maintaining heritage buildings, balancing sustainability with the preservation of their historical significance. The study reveals that the existing IFC schema lacks sufficient properties to capture the granularity and specificity required by these DIN standards in the context of heritage buildings. Therefore, some new properties and property sets are proposed to be added to the IFC schema to fill these gaps and enhance interoperability.