Formalising documentary provenance for unbuilt heritage: implementing source paradata in bSDD for an HBIM reconstruction framework

This paper presents an interoperable HBIM workflow for documenting and virtually reconstructing Giovanni Antonio Antolini's triumphal arch in Faenza, a Napoleonic project from 1797 that was never fully realised and survives only through heterogeneous documentary traces. Arguing that hypothetical reconstruction should be understood not merely as geometric output but as a documented knowledge system, the study integrates the IDOVIR source classification taxonomy, formally implemented in the buildingSMART Data Dictionary (bSDD), with an HBIM model in which each reconstructed element is linked to its evidential basis via LoRef, within an open, interoperable openBIM framework. The outcome is a scholarly "critical 3D edition" of Antolini's project: a reusable, replicable documentation model supporting transparency, provenance management, and future web-based dissemination of 3D cultural heritage data.