Post-earthquake controls and damage detection through structural health monitoring: applications in l’Aquila

The paper presents structural health monitoring (SHM) activities performed on some representative cultural heritage (CH) buildings in the city of l’Aquila after the strong earthquake (Mw = 6.3) that struck the Abruzzo region (central Italy) on April 6, 2009. The severity and the extent of damages caused by the earthquake to historical buildings and monument were never reached before in the recent Italian earthquake history. Emergency activities started immediately after the earthquake to protect CH structures, including damage survey and design/implementation of temporary safety measures. Some historic buildings were soon equipped with monitoring systems in order to assess the level of damage and verify the effectiveness of the executed provisional interventions. The paper focuses in particular on two case studies, i.e. the Spanish Fortress and the Civic Tower. The results of preliminary investigations are reported, including damage survey and operational modal analysis for modal parameter identification using ambient vibration tests. 3-year static and dynamic monitoring features, automatically extracted from raw data acquired by continuous monitoring systems, were then processed using a data-driven approach based on regression analysis to filter out the environmental effects. Following this approach data are decomposed into their reversible and irreversible components, the latter being associated with active damaging processes and the residual structural performance of the two buildings assessed.