Adoption of Digital Technologies for Heritage Conservation: the Case of Al-Busaidy Heritage Site, Mombasa County, Kenya

The built environment, has over years been dotted with the built heritage that have outlived their original users and uses. To maintain the buildings' functional and economic relevance, these assets undergo Adaptive Reuse. Traditionally, the process of Adaptive Reuse documentation has been two-dimensional, sheet-based, linear, methodical and manual in executing certain distinct technical tasks. This traditional workflow has been associated with time delays, cost overruns, measurement errors and physical limitations. Digital transformation technologies, tools and processes like Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) disrupts this and thereby stands out as a significant enabler in Heritage Conservation. In the case of Al-Busaidy Heritage Site regeneration, HBIM was deployed in the Adaptive Reuse of built heritage harnessing the capabilities like laser scanning, scan-to-BIM, cloud storage and virtual reality to realize the benefits of increased speed, accuracy, and cost-savings in the process of conserving heritage.