View article

Health assessment of historical buildings by means of monitoring systems is for sure a fundamental step to preserve architectural heritage, especially for countries as Italy, rich in ancient monuments. Events such as earthquakes or severe weather phenomena constitute a major risk for these buildings because of their age and the related weakness to sustain exceptional excitations. The availability of a continuous, real-time, and automatic structural health monitoring system is considered a useful tool for early detection of a potentially dangerous situation for the structure and its occupants. The choice of the best measurement strategy provided by the monitoring system is crucial: a compromise must be found between the need of information, complexity of the measuring system and the related costs.

Due to the difficulty in modelling most historical structures, it is a hard task to fix proper and safe limits relying on model …