Smart Monitoring of Historic Structures

The paper describes a project aiming at delivering novel structural health monitoring (SHM) systems capable of taking advantage of the reduction of wiring costs typical of wireless sensor networks and at the same time achieving a further cost reduction by e.g. not relying on a centralized communication gateway architecture. Such novel approaches would deliver a “place-and-forget” SHM solution that would be affordable even for historical structures that are considered of lower importance due to their smaller dimension, lower fame or reduced preservation budget. In order to provide the practitioners in the field of cultural heritage with a tool which goes beyond the mere accumulation of data, but instead provides help in the sense of warnings (e.g. if damaging factors increase) and recommendations for action (e.g. window opening/closing, ventilation on/off, heating on/off, etc.) data fusion and interpretation is implemented within the monitoring system. Three main case studies (located in Berlin - Germany, Schwäbisch Gmünd - Germany, and Bologna - Italy) are used to demonstrate and to validate the work that is done in the core work packages. Three test sites (located in Hebron - West- Bank, Palestine, and Vienna – Austria) served for method and system enhancement.