A project of Professor Anthony Yeh of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and Dr. Frank Xue of the Department of Real Estates and Construction from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has been awarded the First Prize of the 2023 Survey and Mapping Science and Technology Award. An award ceremony was held on November 9 during the first China Surveying and Mapping Geographic Information Congress held in Deqing, Zhejiang.
Presented by the Chinese Society for Geodesy, Photogrammetry, and Cartography (CSGPC), the national accolade is to recognise remarkable contributions to China’s surveying and mapping geographical information science, key technological innovations and development, significant promotions of scientific and technological achievements, industrialization of advanced technology, mega engineering projects, and popularization of science.
The HKU team is the only team from Hong Kong to receive the award. The award-winning project, titled “Key Digital Technologies and Applications for Cultural Heritage Conservation in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area,” aims to develop and apply digital technologies that extract the shared cultural “genes” of Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao. The project team is developing a Lingnan cultural gene database by using 3D real scenes, digitisation, and automated creation of BIM models of heritage buildings in the Greater Bay Area. This will enable a cloud service platform for the co-creation, sharing, and demonstration of shared culture and heritage elements of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
This multi-disciplinary team also featured members from Guangzhou Okay Information Technology Ltd, Guangdong Antique Archaeology Institute, Guangzhou Urban Planning and Design Survey Research Institute, and Sun Yat-Sen University.
The HKU team developed two innovative technologies for the award-winning project. The first innovation was a four-level theoretical automation framework of heritage building information modeling (HBIM) reconstruction guided by architectural grammar, which also received a Merit Paper Award from the CRIOCM2020 international conference.
Additionally, the team developed an HBIM automation software in Python language for processing 3D point clouds of heritage buildings, with features like section partitioning, local patch morphological clustering, registration of similar components, and semantic relationship generation. This software is a key technology of the award-winning project and also received an Outstanding Paper Award of CRIOCM2023 international conference.
“The technologies utilise 3D point cloud data, scanned from both interior and exterior of heritage buildings, using state-of-the-art terrestrial or mobile LiDAR devices. With the help of innovative advanced HBIM automation software developed by HKU, users can effortlessly choose from a variety of common components, such as timber door leaves and pillars, to enable the automatic creation of HBIM objects and their semantic relations, making the reconstruction process more efficient and user-friendly,” explained Professor Yeh.
“The technologies can be applied to automatic reconstruction of BIM models for existing buildings for city information modeling (CIM), to enable new smart simulations and analytics for sustainable city development.” Dr Xue added.
香港大學建築學院城市規劃與設計系葉嘉安教授及房地產與建築系薛帆博士的項目榮獲2023年度測繪科學技術獎一等獎。這是首屆中國測繪地理資訊大會所頒布的獎項，於11月9日在浙江德清舉行。
該國家級榮譽由中國測繪地理資訊學會頒發，旨在表彰在我國測繪地理資訊科學事業、重大技術創新與發展、重大科技成果推廣、先進成果產業化、重大工程、科普工作等方面所做的傑出貢獻。
香港大學隊是唯一獲此殊榮的香港隊。 獲獎項目名為“粵港澳大灣區歷史文化遺產保護與傳承數字關鍵技術與應用”，旨在開發和應用提取粵港澳共同文化“基因”的數字技術。 項目團隊正利用3D實景、數字化、自動化創建大灣區文物建築BIM模型，開發嶺南文化基因資料庫， 並進一步打造粵港澳大灣區共享文化遺產元素共創、分享、展示的雲端服務平台。
這個多學科團隊的成員還包括來自廣州歐科資訊科技有限公司、廣東省文物考古研究院、廣州市城市規劃勘測設計研究院和中山大學的成員。
香港大學團隊為獲獎項目開發了兩項創新技術。 第一個創新是以建築語法為指導的遺產建築資訊模型（HBIM）重建的四級理論自動化框架，該框架獲得了CRIOCM2020國際會議的優秀論文獎。
此外，該團隊也開發了基於Python語言的HBIM自動化軟件，用於處理遺產建築的3D點雲，具有剖面劃分、局部圖案形態聚類、相似構件註冊、語義關係生成等功能。 該軟件是獲獎項目的關鍵技術，同時也獲得了CRIOCM2023國際會議優秀論文獎。
「這些技術利用 3D 點雲數據，使用最先進的地面或移動 LiDAR 設備從遺產建築的內部和外部掃描。 借助香港大學開發的創新先進的HBIM自動化軟體，用戶可以輕鬆地選擇各種常見的組件，例如木門扇和柱子，以實現HBIM對象及其語義關係的自動創建，使重建過程更加輕鬆高效且用戶友好。」葉教授解釋。
「這些技術可應用於自動重建現有建築的 BIM 模型，以實現城市資訊模型 (CIM)，從而為永續城市發展提供新的智慧模擬和分析。」 薛博士補充。