Exploring the Contribution of Digital Twins to the Preservation of Historical Heritage - Case Study of the Casa da Baronesa de Serra Branca

The process of preparing a technical project for the restoration of a historic building includes mobilizing teams to conduct topographic and architectural surveys, photographic reports, and characterize the construction systems. In the case of buildings of historical interest and in precarious structural conditions, this process becomes more complex and time-consuming. In this context, the Mais Incra Project was developed, an extension project involving university students and professors from the Civil Engineering course at IFRN, with the objective of developing technical proposals for the use of existing buildings in rural settlements of INCRA, a Federal Agency. The selected buildings were those included in the architectural complex of the former country house of the Barons of Serra Branca, located in Sao Rafael/RN, Brazil, built in 1832, with a total area of 1,783.63 m(2). This article presents the project optimization tool called Digital Twins, which enabled the modeling of the entire building system and improved the accuracy and agility of technical projects. Finally, it presents a comparative structure between modeling with digital twins and traditional technologies. A digital model of the built environment was created using the Matterport platform to generate digital twins, using a 360 degrees camera and its native image processing software. The digital model of the built environment made it possible to reduce the number of field visits and improve the technical reports and projects generated.