Article:

There are many buildings which fall under heritage preservation; among these are cultural institutions and museums which are frequented by a highamount of pedestrian traffic which must be directedfor optimal access, security and safety reasons, andchanging usage scenarios.Solutions such as belt barriers offer a highly reconfigurable solution, however, they come at a highcost in terms of personnel. A further disadvantagelies in the fact that they do not blend in well, makingthe access area look like a security check rather thanan integral part of the historical building.This paper argues for retractable crowd controlsolutions designed to fit into the building’s style. Instead of using personnel for reconfiguration of theaccess area, we entrust the building itself with theresponsibility to manage people flow (see figure 1a)through use of an Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) acting on top of the Building Information Model (BIM),thereby forming a Digital Twin.Our contribution lies in the following areas:• We initially review the State of the Art in directing flows in heritage buildings (see “Background and problem definition”) in order toestablish a methodology for sentient buildings that are able to direct pedestrian flow(see “Methodology”).• We describe an ABS acting on top of a BIM,which computes the next state of actuators(e.g. barriers) using current and recordedpedestrian flow as well as preset rules (see“Digital Twin”).• We showcase the approach using the concrete example of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana in Rome (see “Case Study”), relating theresults back to our Methodology and onceagain looking at the apparent discrepancy between heritage protection and implementation of solutions for management of peopleflow (see “Discussion”).As further contribution, this paper shows how a Digital Twin can be used in practical terms - an undertaking which has often been named in literaturebut hardly ever done to the extent brought forwardherein.