Supporting Decision-Making in Cultural Heritage Management Utilizing the Level of Information Need and HBIM: The Case of Bou Inania Madrasa in Meknes, Morocco

Abstract

The preservation of cultural heritage presents persistent challenges due to the heterogeneity of methodologies, data structures, and information requirements involved in heritage projects. While conventional Building Information Modeling (BIM) workflows commonly rely on the Level of Development (LOD), heritage contexts require flexible and requirement-driven approaches to manage both geometric and semantic information according to stakeholder needs. To address these challenges, this study adopts a design-oriented approach that investigates the integration of the Level of Information Need (LOIN) within an OpenBIM-based Historic Building Information Modeling (HBIM) framework. The proposed methodology combines a systematic literature review with a practical case study to develop and implement an interoperable workflow articulating HBIM, Level of Information Need (LOIN), Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), and Information Delivery Specification (IDS). Within this framework, LOIN governs the relevance and granularity of information, while IFC and IDS ensure interoperability, data exchange, and conformity checking. The methodology is applied to a Moroccan heritage case study focusing on the documentation and management of building pathologies, including cracks, humidity, capillary rise, and material degradation. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach overcomes the limitations of LOD by enabling requirement-driven information management, thereby improving pathology documentation and supporting informed decision-making for cultural heritage conservation.