Recovery of historic real estate: Life Cycle Costing and economic feasibility

The tools currently available for the parametric estimate of the costs for the recovery of properties, in the phase of verifying the economic feasibility of the interventions, do not present satisfactory levels of accuracy. In addition to the intrinsic forecasting difficulties at a planning level characterized by a limited level of knowledge of the artefact to be recovered, and a certain terminological confusion especially in professional contexts, there is also limited attention to this issue in the scientific field, which is further reduced since the dynamism of the construction sector and its weight within the Italian economic system decreased. These conditions are even more accentuated in the case of historic building heritage, due to the well-known difficulties in generalizing situations. A further, significant limitation of the parametric tools currently available is the absence of connections with the Life Cycle Cost. At this point, it seems clear that structural monitoring of cultural heritage is crucial not just for to ensure public safety and environmental protection, but also and above all for verifying the economic feasibility. In fact, it helps identify potential issues and defects in structures, enabling the implementation of preventive actions to avert failures or breakages. The advent of drones has streamlined this process, allowing for more detailed analysis while reducing costs and time. Therefore, the use of an automated system for detecting and monitoring structural degradation, consent an easier data collection, processing, and forecasting. With rare exceptions, estimating studies have often looked more deeply into the topic of cost estimation in the executive project phase, in which the level of information is objectively much more detailed. This contribution constitutes the start of a research path which, starting from the recognition of existing literature, aims to develop a tool for rapidly estimating costs in the feasibility project phase of restoration interventions on historic real estate, combining, from a structural point of view, the use of an automated system for detecting and monitoring structural degradation.