Structural health monitoring technologies for seismic risk mitigation

Many European countries are characterized by highly urbanized areas made of constructions that are thirty or even more years old. This is the reason why interest of research community is raising in the field of structural maintenance and protection against environmental actions such as seismic ones. Monitoring, in this sense, can be utilized as a very important tool to increase public safety and safeguard of critical and historical constructions. The paper deals with integrated monitoring technologies applied to constructions exposed to high levels of seismic risk. In fact, existing technologies are basically used to maintain structures, while the innovation in monitoring networks could be better exploited to control the structural damage both in ordinary and emergency situations.