3D REALITY-BASED MODELING IN HBIM ENVIRONMENT APPLIED TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES: RECONSTRUCTIVE HYPOTHESIS OF THE LATE-ROMAN FORT OF UMM AL-DABADIB (EGYPT)

The work aims to deepen the various aspects of three-dimensional modelling based on an image-based survey of an archaeological object. The architecture subject of this study is a late Roman fortified structure, located in Egypt, in the oasis of Kharga, more precisely in Umm al-Dabadib. The aim was to model in a parametric environment the architectural evidence measured both with classical approaches and with 3D surveys and to develop reconstructive hypotheses, assisted by historical and architectural documentation of archaeological sites strictly interconnected to Umm al-Dabadib. If the model usually takes root from a project and develops gradually with it, in the historical and archaeological case the only starting point is the current state of the building, narrated through surveys and documentation. Thanks to the close-range photogrammetric survey of the entire fort of Umm al-Dabadib, it was possible to accurately reconstruct its shape and geometry and infer the construction techniques. This made it possible to recognize and understand the richness, peculiarity and uniqueness of each modelled element, to identify and reconstruct its shape, to draw fairly reliable assumptions about its construction methods and therefore to reconstruct the entire architectural organism. The irreversible destruction of elements of the building that established its identity is the main reason for recreating it even only in a virtual environment, through a virtual tool, albeit based on the reality and tangibility of pre-existence. The strength of the reality-based modelling is that from the same digital survey it was possible to develop different architectural solutions.