Monitoring the stability of infrastructures in an emergency scenario: The “Costa Concordia” vessel wreck

We present a summary of the monitoring activities performed by CNR-IRPI during the emergency scenario relevant to the “Costa Concordia” ship stranding, occurred on January 13, 2012, near the coast of Il Giglio island, Italy. Two Robotized Total Stations (RTS) were deployed in different times in order to monitor the stability of the vessel during the Search and Rescue activities, as well as the fuel recovery accomplishment. RTS data have been considered as an important support for the early warning system set up to ensure the safety of the operators. The dataset and results herein included are unique, and represent a peculiar and concrete opportunity to test the efficiency of specific monitoring techniques, which were developed to control and study phenomena relevant to engineering geology activities, also in very peculiar structural health’s monitoring, relevant to an unforeseen emergency scenario. and/or deformation of the ship. The “target” and the scenario to monitor was unusual, thus, a specific system and/or straightforward procedure was not directly available. For this reason, the monitoring approach was derived from other disciplines, and mainly from methods that are typically used in engineering geology applications. Monitoring activities were coordinated by DPC through the Department of Earth Sciences of the University Florence (DST-UNIFI). The integrated system employed to monitor the ship’s stability included (Fabri, 2012): (i) two accelerometers installed on board of the vessel, and operated by