Leveraging linked data for enhanced knowledge representation in historical centers safety assessment. Insights from Castelnuovo di Porto, Rome

The preservation of historic centres depends not only on physical conservation measures but also on the ability to structure, interpret, and share knowledge about the built heritage. In many European contexts, particularly in Southern Europe, historic urban fabrics are characterised by masonry building aggregates that embody stratified construction practices, social histories, and collective identities, while simultaneously presenting high levels of structural vulnerability. Understanding these complex entities requires a multidisciplinary cognitive phase, where historical documentation, architectural survey, diagnostic data, and digital models converge. This paper proposes a Linked Data–based methodology aimed at enhancing knowledge representation and interoperability in the assessment of historic masonry aggregates. The approach is centred on the Historic Survey Ontology (HSV), developed to formally describe and interconnect heterogeneous sources such as archival documents, photographs, drawings, point clouds, and Building Information Models, while explicitly recording the actors and contexts involved in the knowledge process. By integrating HSV with established ontologies, the methodology supports a coherent and scalable semantic framework that reflects both the material characteristics of historic constructions and the interpretative nature of heritage analysis. The proposed approach is applied to a masonry aggregate in the historic centre of Castelnuovo di Porto (Rome), demonstrating how Linked Data can improve the organisation, transparency, and reusability of heritage knowledge, supporting informed conservation strategies and future research developments.