A novel & practical approach to structural health monitoring — The RECONASS vision: Local positioning, sensor networks, secure communications and remote sensing at the service of structural monitoring to assess construction damage and related needs

Monitoring of constructed facilities, critical or not, utilised by different organisations or by the public in general and in particular during natural or manmade disasters, tends to be of paramount importance, as these structures are instantly becoming of keen interest to a variety of authorities. This paper presents the work that is currently being performed in the RECONASS project [1], towards providing a monitoring system to assess the structural condition and related needs of single or grouped facilities. This system encompasses technologies originating from different domains that are seamlessly interworking with the aim to shorten the required time of assessments and to establish an efficient updating process. The overall technology to be implemented in RECONASS is focusing on the case of reinforced concrete buildings that constitute the main type of construction of critical buildings in the earthquake prone countries of Europe, as well as, the rest of Europe and North America. The RECONASS system proposes the following synergistic approach: a compact and highly energy efficient local positioning system (LPS) cooperating with a set of strategically placed strain, acceleration and temperature sensors and the aggregation of sensor information through a robust, secure, intelligent and resilient communication module. Additionally, a remote sensing approach complements the aforementioned methodology, using air borne and space borne systems. Last but not least, the data fusion and the overall structural assessment will be enabled within an interoperable Post Crisis Needs Assessment Tool in regards to Construction Damage and related Needs (PCCDN) which will be a platform that includes both an assessment and an economic loss and needs module.