S.h.m. on Historical Heritage: Robust Methods to Face Large Uncertainties

Architectural heritage is a resource and a fundamental part of the cultural European background; it also causes concern, due to the huge investment needed to maintain it, or even to repair it after environmental injuries. The title recalls the subject of an Italian National project. The aim of the project is developing commercially available, user-extendable wireless and optical sensor products and technologies to mainly address the issue of the conservation of masonry architectural heritage. These technologies allow for the dense instrumentation of structures at relatively low-cost. In addition to the technological aspects of developing new kinds of sensors smaller and cheaper than the traditional ones, with particular attention to the fibre optics and MEMs, a common software and communications framework is required to allow the sensors to communicate, share information and estimate the structural state. Secondarily, more traditional techniques of modal identification, probabilistic safety assessment and structural control, which already constitute a consolidated background of the proponent research group, will be available as a support tool.