Historical Center of Bethlehem

Original name

Beit Lahm historic city

Geographic Area

Bethlehem, West Bank, Palestine

Reference Project

3D BETHLEHEM – Management and control of urban growth for the development of heritage and improvement of life in the city of Bethlehem

Site description

The city of Bethlehem, which rises a few miles south of Jerusalem in the West Bank, has seen a succession of cultures and populations who, with their work and their domination over the centuries, have conditioned the urban transformation of the historical center.
From the construction of the Nativity Church in 326, the city was conquered and rebuilt many times by the Persians, the Arabs and the Europeans. Conquered to the Turks by the British in 1918, the city was comprised in the area under Israeli military administration, and from 1967 it is under the Palestinian National Authority.

Credits

Promoted by
AICS – Italian Agency for Development Cooperation

Coordinator
Sandro Parrinello

Partnership
Project Responsible: Municipality of Pavia.
Scientific Coordination: University of Pavia.
Partners: Municipality of Bethlehem, University of Bethlehem, Province of Pavia, Order of Engineers of Province of Pavia, SISTERR Territorial System of Pavia for International Cooperation A.P.S., ANCI Lombardia, VIS – International Voluntary Service for Development NGO, Palestinian Engineers Association – Jerusalem
Center.

Survey Activities

Terrestrial Laser Scanner
Raffaella De Marco, Elisabetta Doria, Pietro Becherini

Mobilel Laser Scanner
Pietro Becherini

UAVs Photogrammetry
Francesca Picchio

Terrestrial Photogrammetry
Francesca Picchio, Paola Barazzoni, Raffaella De Marco, Elisabetta Doria

360° Photo
Paola Barazzoni, Pietro Becherini

Architecture and Landscape Photo
Francesca Picchio, Elisabetta Doria, Paola Barazzoni, Marco Morandotti, Raffaella De Marco

Team from Municipality of Bethlehem
Anwar Alawi, Ghaida Abuaita, Enas Marzouqa, Ziad Sami

Post production Activities

2D Drawings
Elisabetta Doria
The 2D drawings and ortho-mosaics on Al-Anatreh quarter have been elaborated by the student Paola Barazzoni within the masterdegree thesis work “Bethlehem. Survey and analysis of the old urban nucleus for the knowledge of the historical built heritage.”, in Building Engineering and Architecture course at University of Pavia, tutor: Sandro Parrinello, co-tutors: Francesca Picchio, Andrea Arrighetti.

3D Modelling, Census & GIS System
Raffaella De Marco, Francesca Galasso, Elisabetta Doria,, Silvia La Placa, Alessia Miceli, Francesca Picchio, Hangjun Fu.
The 3D modelling of Bethlehem ahwash has been part of the training programme developed by student Alberto Pettineo during his curricular training internship 2020 at DAda-Lab. Laboratory, within the masterdegree course in Building Engineering and Architecture at University of Pavia

Gallery
TLS Point Cloud
UAV Model
3D Model

[metaslider id=”6670″]

#StayTuned

Documentation Methodology

In its contemporary shape, the Old City is composed by districts of irregular development arranged concentrically around the Manger Square, as al-Najajreh, al-Farahieh, al-Anatreh, al-Tarajmeh, al-Qawawseh, al-Hreizat and al-Fawagreh. The architectural heritage present in the historical city, defined by the presence of different cultures and urban policies, highlights a stratification of systems and constructive units, also found in the use of materials and in the reuse of technological and decorative components, in which to identify the transformations of buildings and the history of settlements.

[supsystic-gallery id=125][supsystic-gallery id=126][supsystic-gallery id=119]

The survey has been conducted with the use of Lidar and photographic instrumentation, of terrestrial type with static application (Terrestrial Laser Scanner, Camera Reflex for close-range photogrammetry) and dynamic acquisition (Mobile Stencil, Ricoh Camera) and of aerial type (DJI drones for SfM photogrammetry and for photographic investigation), ensuring a total coverage of the urban center.
In this way, a digitation of urban space is possible, ensuring the analysis and study of the architecture of the historical center in a virtual experience of interaction in the 3D point cloud database.

[supsystic-gallery id=173][supsystic-gallery id=172][supsystic-gallery id=174]

The TLS acquisition has been carried out through scan stations along urban routes, developing a uniform high dense point cloud of urban facades, and documenting also the main internal courts to complete the geometry of the building aggregates. The UAV documentation has been adopted for roofs and for the achievement of the upper portions of facades, exploiting the natural slope of the hill ground of the historical center. The metric integration between the two systems was carried out with laser scanner stations on the top of selected buildings, chosen for their position and height, which ensured target points for the georeferencing of aerial data.

[supsystic-gallery id=132][supsystic-gallery id=136][supsystic-gallery id=135]

The restitution of the formal structure of the historic center of Bethlehem has been oriented towards a pre-eminent request for “automation” of urban modeling, guaranteeing an objective and homogeneous, as well as rapid, extension of the method to the entire experimental area of the city center. In this sense, the state of the art of urban modeling research identifies different solutions of 3D modeling algorithms for the automatic extraction of surfaces from discontinuous morphometric databases, assessable on their formal resolution as a compromise between the compactness of detail of the representation and the reliability to the input data. Another objective of the project is the structuring of an information system integrated with the three-dimensional model of the historic centre. Through information sheets that collect the data of a technological survey conducted for the different elements of the urban fabric, the development of a G.I.S. that the Municipality of Bethlehem will be able to use to control the interventions on the city, both maintenance and new construction.

[supsystic-gallery id=128][supsystic-gallery id=127][supsystic-gallery id=129]

The institutional and technical dialogue established with the technical office, G.I.S. section, of the Municipality of Bethlehem, responsible for the urban planning tools, consolidates the management of the project in all its phases, setting an action of comparison and confidence with the city, preliminary to the plan of survey, building analysis and modelling of a 3D urban database as implementation structure for the information system. In the same way, technical contacts with the local professionals involved in the building transformation of territory have been performed organizing seminars and conferences in Bethlehem, to concretize the international support to urban management.

3D BETHLEHEM Project in Years: ACTIVITIES AND GOALS

[supsystic-gallery id=118][supsystic-gallery id=120][supsystic-gallery id=121]

Bibliography

Parrinello, S. (Ed.) (2020). 3D BETHLEHEM. Management and control of urban growth for the development of heritage and improvement of life in the city of Bethlehem. Volume 2. Firenze: Edifir.

Picchio, F., De Marco, R., Dell’Amico, A., Doria, E., Galasso, F., La Placa, S., Miceli, A., Parrinello, S. (2020). Procedure di analisi e modellazione urbana per la gestione dei centri storici. Betlemme, Solikamsk, Cattaro e Santo Domingo. Paesaggio Urbano, 2, 103 – 115. ResearchGate

Parrinello, S., De Marco, R., Galasso, F. (2020). Un protocollo di modellazione urbana mediante abachi e modulo tecnologici. Dal rilievo digitale al sistema informativo 3D per il centro storico di Betlemme. In T. Empler, A. Caldarone, A. Fusinetti (Ed.), 3D MODELING & BIM. Data Modeling & Management for AECO Industry (pp. 62-83). Roma: DEI s.r.l. Tipografia del Genio Civile. ResearchGate

Parrinello, S. (Ed.) (2019). 3D BETHLEHEM. Management and control of urban growth for the development of heritage and improvement of life in the city of Bethlehem. Volume 1. Firenze: Edifir.

Parrinello, S., Picchio, F., De Marco, R., Doria, E., Barazzoni, P. (2019). 3D Bethlehem, un progetto di cooperazione internazionale per la conoscenza della città stratificata. In P. Belardi (Ed.) Riflessioni. L’arte del disegno/Il disegno dell’arte (pp. 899-908). Roma: Gangemi Editore. ResearchGate

Parrinello, S., Picchio, F., De Marco, R., Doria, E. (2019). 3D Bethlehem. Management and control of urban growth for the development of heritage and improvement of life in the city of Bethlehem. In S. Bertocci, A. Conte (Ed.), II Simposio UID di internazionalizzazione della ricerca. Patrimoni culturali, Architettura, Paesaggio e Design tra ricerca e sperimentazione didattica (pp. 214-219). Firenze: DidaPRESS ResearchGate

Parrinello, S., Picchio, F. (2019). Integration and Comparison of Close Range SfM methodologies for the analysis and the development of the historical city center of Bethlehem. Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci., XLII-2/W9, 589–595. ResearchGate

Picchio, F., De Marco, R. (2019) Landscape Analysis and Urban Description of Bethlehem Historical Center: a Methodological Approach for Digital Documentation. Heritage, 2, 507-518. ResearchGate

Parrinello, S., Picchio, F., De Marco, R. (2018). Urban modelling experiences for the representation of the historical city in Holy Land. DisegnareCON, 11, 5.1-5.22. ResearchGate

Parrinello, S., Picchio, F., De Marco, R. (2018). Documentation systems for a urban renewal proposal in developing territories: the digitalization project of Bethlehem Historical Center. In 2018 IEEE International Conference on Metrology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage METROARCHEO 2018 Proceedings (pp. 211-216). Cassino: IEEE. ResearchGate