A Computer-based Digitized platform for Planning and Designing The Historic City

Abstract

The digitalization of planning and designing for the historic city and its conservation is practically in great and urgent demands but until now no such a computer-based platform is appropriately invented. Through the analysis of the functionalities required by the digitalization itself and the planning and designing, a computer-based platform, named as H-CIM in this paper, is conceptualized to integrate the realities, the stakeholders and the information to improve the performances of any interventions in the ever-lasting transformation process of the historic city and the conservation status in reality. Therefore, H-CIM is structured by the professional circuits of the conservation planning and designing activities with four independent core functional units: (1) the digitalization of all relevant information, (2) the decision making based on the evaluation and assessment, (3) execution of the decision, including planning and designing any concrete scheme, and (4) dissemination of the historic city and its conservation. The whole structure of the computer-based platform is composed by three tiers by the internal organization of functional unites and the external bridging with the realities and stakeholders. However, comparing with the other platforms for the single built heritages, the running of H-CIM depends on the four critical particularities, including the comprehensive categories of information and the way of digitalization, the high openness and inclusion for stakeholders, especially the planners, designers, managers and their clients, the independent functional units and their integrations and the applications of the multiple technologies. However, this conceptualization is a prototype for the sort of platform which is provided to be varied according to the specific situations.