Architectural Heritage Exploration and Visualization Using Interactive and Immersive Technologies

The Historic District of Jeddah (HDJ) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is facing many challenges to attain conservation and sustainability, due to natural disasters and the absence of appropriate digital recordings and documentation. Previous studies on world heritage conservation attempted to address these challenges while adopting the immersive and visual technologies separately or via merging one of them with another to conserve the heritage sites (e.g. BIM/GIS integration or generating GIS/BIM, integrating VR with BIM, or GIS). However, few of these studies handled the case of the historic heritage of KSA.

This research aims to fill this gap by utilizing all these technologies together to create an immersive visualization system for heritage sites. The researcher proposes a novel method using immersive technologies (VR, AR, MR) and visualization methods (3D modeling) combined with Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) and Heritage Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) for comprehensive conservation of cultural heritage sites in Saudi Arabia. The proposed method involves three phases: a) HBIM and HGIS generation: This involves creating 3D architectural models and spatial data using industry-standard collection tools, b) HBIM and HGIS Integration: The data from both phases is merged into a single georeferenced system for unified analysis, and c) Interactive User Experience: An interactive user environment is developed using a game engine, allowing users to explore the 3D model and access historical information.

This research offers a multi-disciplinary approach to cultural heritage conservation, combining innovative informatics with technology for documentation, communication, and user engagement. The findings will enable users to virtually explore the heritage sites and track changes over time. This immersive experience fosters a deeper understanding and appreciation of the architectural heritage. The proposed method can be applied to other cultural heritage sites globally. Future studies could explore using 3D viewers for information retrieval and potentially using CityGML, a rich 3D geospatial data format, for even more comprehensive HBIM-HGIS integration. This would significantly contribute to the advancement of world heritage conservation efforts.