GIS-Based Accessibility and Safety Assessment in Small Historic Centres in Inner Areas. Pilot Application in Stigliano and Interoperability with a Digital Twin.

The high vulnerability and exposure to environmental risk of most historic villages in Italian inland areas, together with the poor accessibility, the degradation imposed by abandonment, and the increase in the elderly population, make interventions for the functional rehabilitation or reconversion of the built heritage and related public space complex and controversial. This opens questions also with respect to the evaluation and identification of possible actions to improve territorial and local accessibility emphasizing the need to consider among the priority the redevelopment, transformation and securing of the public space. Within this framework, the article experiments with a possible decision-supporting evaluation process in the minor historic center of Stigliano (MT), the lead municipality of the inner area Montagna Materana and currently the site of an experimental inter-university research project on digital twin implementation. The contribution gives a first reading of information collected through digital survey and GIS-based collaborative data collection techniques and set up a methodology to plan and prioritise interventions aimed at improving accessibility and safety. The methodology is based on a set of indicators for evaluating usability, walkability, and vulnerability. The objective is twofold: on the one hand, to ensure accessibility and safety of the routes that provide access to services and relational nodes within the historic center, with particular attention to daily use and the most fragile users; on the other hand, to make tourist usability more attractive, comfortable and inclusive.