The use of Digital Twins for heritage conservation: the Church of San Juan del Hospital as a case study

The evolution of new technologies in construction is opening up new possibilities in the process of information management that encompass all stages of a building's useful life, design, construction, and operation. In this sense, the tools of the Building Information Modelling (BIM) environment are very useful, consolidating themselves in the management of new buildings. They are currently beginning their introduction to the management of historic buildings through HBIM. Among the utilities that facilitate the management of historic buildings is the simulation of their behaviour in order to develop the most appropriate strategies to guarantee the conservation of their heritage assets. Among the tools that guarantee a correct simulation of the building behaviour are digital twins that, based on HBIM models and duly provided with real data, allow the generation of dynamic models that facilitate the decision-making process for the maintenance of the building. This paper describes the creation and validation of the digital twin developed for the church of San Juan del Hospital in Valencia, where the importance of data collection to bring the behaviour of the simulated building closer to the real behaviour has been proven.