Periodic Reporting for period 2 - STABLE (STructural stABiLity risk assEssment)
Reporting period: 2020-11-01 to 2023-10-31
Europe’s Cultural Heritage (CH) is at risk, endangered by environmental processes enhanced by climate changes and anthropogenic pressure. Specifically the slow (subsidence) and seismic (earthquake) movements of the ground have a strong impact on the structural stability of the CH. To have an idea of the dimension of the phenomena, the damage on the CH asset declared by the Italian Ministry of CH, caused by the recent earthquakes in Centre Italy, has been assessed in 2 Billion Eur. In this scenario, authorities in charge to CH preservation have a strong requirement for systematic, effective, usable and affordable tools and services to forecast and monitor the degradation process to enable preventive maintenance and to reduce the cost of the restoration as well as the death toll.
STABLE puts disaster prevention and the reduction of risks at the centre of disaster risk management according to the similar policy of EU to help Member States to develop policies to better prevent, prepare for, and respond to disasters. STABLE actions will help in the direction signed on the “The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030”, the global agreement to reduce and prevent disaster risks across the globe, where the EU played a key role in the negotiations of the agreement and supports EU Member States and non-EU countries.
STABLE main objective is the design and development of a Thematic Platform, combining structural stability models, damage assessment simulation tools, advanced remote sensing, in-situ monitoring technologies, geotechnics and cadastral data sets with WebGIS application for mapping and long term monitoring of CH. This enables effective monitoring and management of the CH to prevent, or at least reduce, catastrophic damages.
The Platform will constitute for scientist the way to share and improve CH safeguard methods, and to professionals to apply the most advanced technologies in the related fields.
STABLE puts disaster prevention and the reduction of risks at the centre of disaster risk management according to the similar policy of EU to help Member States to develop policies to better prevent, prepare for, and respond to disasters. STABLE actions will help in the direction signed on the “The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030”, the global agreement to reduce and prevent disaster risks across the globe, where the EU played a key role in the negotiations of the agreement and supports EU Member States and non-EU countries.
STABLE main objective is the design and development of a Thematic Platform, combining structural stability models, damage assessment simulation tools, advanced remote sensing, in-situ monitoring technologies, geotechnics and cadastral data sets with WebGIS application for mapping and long term monitoring of CH. This enables effective monitoring and management of the CH to prevent, or at least reduce, catastrophic damages.
The Platform will constitute for scientist the way to share and improve CH safeguard methods, and to professionals to apply the most advanced technologies in the related fields.
After the First period mainly directed to the acquisition of information as ground data (e.g. geotechnical information), site scale monitoring (e.g. ground monitoring stations, laser scanners etc.) and risk forecasting models (earthquake) to derive end-user driven products (e.g. hazard, vulnerability and risk maps), the second period has been focussed in the platform development, data integration w.r.t. the selected test sites and deployment on the web.
To realize the IT service platform, combining advanced satellite technologies with existing ground-based data, a particular software has been designed and tested. The final result addressed risk forecasting modelling for the long term and continue monitoring and update of structural stability of the architectural heritage and in particular of historical centers affected by geo-hazards ina GIS environment.
Data acquisition on the selected test sites studies of Rieti (Italy), Nafplion. Rethymno (Greece) and Strovolos (Cyprus) been realized by field campaign (including geotechnical perspection , visual inspection) and data collection from existing archives and data sets.
The selection of satellite data to be used was defined during the first year of project, with particular regards to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensor for the SAR Interferometry (InSAR) analysis.
Photogrammetric and In-situ monitoring systems (already present at the selected studied areas) has been performed including seismic ambient noise measurement in Strovolos, Rieti and Nafplion.
The geotechnical assessment and seismic analysis earthquake scenarios of the case study areas, Nafplio, Strovolos and Rieti, has been completed. The Structural Damage assessment and risk map software kit has been developed and integrated into the platform. The activities related to Structural stability was concentrated on improvement of the MATLAB code, derivation of fragility curves for generic building and available building data, release of the draft manual of the MATLAB code and analytical fragility curve for a model of adobe building.
The final product is an essential GIS system with extensions to include the Structural Stability Model processing. The platform includes an extensive dataset of most of the intermediate results of the system and the Web portal to publish the results on the web.
The platform has been used to upload, integrate and produce risk maps of the selected test sites. In parallel dissemination and communication of the project results included web site, social media, peer-review papers as well as four summer school and joint collocations and a Final Conference held in Rome.
To realize the IT service platform, combining advanced satellite technologies with existing ground-based data, a particular software has been designed and tested. The final result addressed risk forecasting modelling for the long term and continue monitoring and update of structural stability of the architectural heritage and in particular of historical centers affected by geo-hazards ina GIS environment.
Data acquisition on the selected test sites studies of Rieti (Italy), Nafplion. Rethymno (Greece) and Strovolos (Cyprus) been realized by field campaign (including geotechnical perspection , visual inspection) and data collection from existing archives and data sets.
The selection of satellite data to be used was defined during the first year of project, with particular regards to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensor for the SAR Interferometry (InSAR) analysis.
Photogrammetric and In-situ monitoring systems (already present at the selected studied areas) has been performed including seismic ambient noise measurement in Strovolos, Rieti and Nafplion.
The geotechnical assessment and seismic analysis earthquake scenarios of the case study areas, Nafplio, Strovolos and Rieti, has been completed. The Structural Damage assessment and risk map software kit has been developed and integrated into the platform. The activities related to Structural stability was concentrated on improvement of the MATLAB code, derivation of fragility curves for generic building and available building data, release of the draft manual of the MATLAB code and analytical fragility curve for a model of adobe building.
The final product is an essential GIS system with extensions to include the Structural Stability Model processing. The platform includes an extensive dataset of most of the intermediate results of the system and the Web portal to publish the results on the web.
The platform has been used to upload, integrate and produce risk maps of the selected test sites. In parallel dissemination and communication of the project results included web site, social media, peer-review papers as well as four summer school and joint collocations and a Final Conference held in Rome.
Thanks to the synergy of specific knowledges (geotechnical, structural stability, remote sensing, in-situ monitoring systems and Information Technology), STABLE built a Thematic Platform for CH, an interactive and continuously updated instrument for the safeguard, monitoring and managing of CH from environmental hazards. The platform has been validated by including four rellevant test cases in the deployed IT structure.
The STABLE system platform, integrating geotechnical, civil engineering and different monitoring techniques ia a GIS system, is at the forefront of the technology and beyond the current state-of-art. In fact current techniques address the temathic as "separate" areas never combining and integrating all the available different techniques in a coherent and potentially scaleable system.
The socio economic impact is considered relevant by addressing:
a) Innovative schemes of management and protection of cultural heritage based on preventive maintenance. STABLE enables the systematic use of preventive maintenance approach as opposed to the emergency restoration approach;
b) Contribution to the development of risk mitigation strategy for protection schemes of cultural heritage. STABLE enables future development of ad-hoc risk mitigation strategies for eartquake threats, developing innovative alert risk models applicable for preventive maintenance as well as for reduction of casualties in case of severe events impacting on inhabited city centres;
c) Creation of a favourable economic impact for tourism. The strengthening of the protection of cultural heritage of the selected case studies and their enhancement will help to determine a favourable economic impact on tourism with the potential to create new jobs;
d) The validated thematic platform, has the potential to create new business and job opportunities as part of innovative EO downstream services, for the protection of CH at European scale.
The STABLE system platform, integrating geotechnical, civil engineering and different monitoring techniques ia a GIS system, is at the forefront of the technology and beyond the current state-of-art. In fact current techniques address the temathic as "separate" areas never combining and integrating all the available different techniques in a coherent and potentially scaleable system.
The socio economic impact is considered relevant by addressing:
a) Innovative schemes of management and protection of cultural heritage based on preventive maintenance. STABLE enables the systematic use of preventive maintenance approach as opposed to the emergency restoration approach;
b) Contribution to the development of risk mitigation strategy for protection schemes of cultural heritage. STABLE enables future development of ad-hoc risk mitigation strategies for eartquake threats, developing innovative alert risk models applicable for preventive maintenance as well as for reduction of casualties in case of severe events impacting on inhabited city centres;
c) Creation of a favourable economic impact for tourism. The strengthening of the protection of cultural heritage of the selected case studies and their enhancement will help to determine a favourable economic impact on tourism with the potential to create new jobs;
d) The validated thematic platform, has the potential to create new business and job opportunities as part of innovative EO downstream services, for the protection of CH at European scale.