Earthquakes represent a major natural hazard, that can cause substantial human and economic losses, leading to a negative impact on the economic welfare and resilience of communities in seismic-prone areas worldwide, including Cyprus. Considering the significant increase in losses recorded in earthquake-vulnerable areas during the last decade and the requirement for countries to establish tailored civil protection mechanisms to align with EU objectives, there is a pressing socio-economic necessity to create a comprehensive tool for assessing earthquake risks and estimating potential losses in Cyprus. This paper highlights the urgent need for the development of an innovative Seismic Risk and Loss Estimation GIS-based platform for Cyprus in which the expected damage level and economic loss of the built environment including critical infrastructures and cultural heritage (monuments and sites) for various seismic scenarios will be estimated. This paper also presents the methodology to be followed for developing this platform that incorporates well-established seismic risk and loss estimation methodologies with GIS data, aiming to quantify and visualize the damage state, the risk of significant damage as well as the direct economic loss of infrastructure systems in the aftermath of earthquakes. The Cyprus Seismic Risk and Loss Estimation GIS-based Platform is expected to have a positive scientific, economic, and societal impact and it can be used as an important decision tool for the policymakers, the building owners and for insurance companies.
Remote sensing is a powerful tool in various fields, including civil engineering, due to its ability to provide valuable information, about objects or areas, from a distance. This paper examines the relationship between remote sensing and civil engineering, highlighting its applications, advantages, challenges and limitations. A review was carried out to address the role of remote sensing technologies in the planning, design, construction, and maintenance processes in civil engineering projects. Furthermore, the synergy between remote sensing data and civil engineering is presented through case studies. Finally, this paper addresses future directions, training and education, and collaboration opportunities.
Concrete is a widely used construction material worldwide due to its high durability over time. Despite the long-term performance of concrete, there are still failures in Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings due to the deterioration of concrete caused by environmental and weather conditions. Also, climate change accelerates the deterioration processes in RC structures and affects their safety and serviceability. Therefore, there is an urgent socio-economic need for optimum maintenance and repair of existing RC structures according to climate changes for achieving acceptable levels of structural safety. To achieve this, the science of satellite remote sensing is essential for quantifying and providing up-to-date information on the climate changes occurring in the atmosphere, land, and oceans on a global scale. This paper presents the influence of climate change on existing RC structures. At the same time, this paper highlights the potential of using satellite remote sensing for identifying the impact of climate change on existing RC structures in order to accurately assess the performance of existing building stock and, then to propose efficient and optimum maintenance and repairing strategies toward a resilient society.
The ongoing degradation of structures is associated with expensive maintenance and the resulting decline in safety, force the engineer to search for structural health monitoring tools that will be fast, effective, cover large areas and cost as minimum as possible. In this context the thermal imaging cameras are an ideal monitoring tool; with the radical development of higher resolution thermal imaging, the decreasing cost of the camera and its portable size makes this technology promising to accomplish the requirements of modern structural monitoring. Thermal imaging camera uses algorithms to interpret visual displays of the amount of infrared energy emitted, transmitted and reflected by an object and form images that are invisible to the human eye. Therefore, the thermal imaging technology can be used as a tool to help the engineer gain better insight and viable information and thus enabling the structure to retain/sustain its function, form and strength within acceptable limits under operational loading. This paper presents applications of this technology for assessing the integrity of structures along with possible trends and gains on different areas of structural integrity, such as the detection of corrosion in steel rebars embedded in RC structures and the chloride contents on concrete surface.
The building stock should be in operational and reliable state in order to ensure primarily the safety of the users. In addition to safety, nowadays the comfort of the users is of prime importance. To satisfy the required comfort levels the user should consume energy, in the form of heating, cooling etc. Therefore this ongoing trend to satisfy these conditions, results in buildings which are safer, more economic to operate and more sustainable. Taking into account economic, technical, durability and environmental factors there is the need for a holistic approach for the optimum performance of buildings for structural integrity and energy efficiency. Current practice evolves around building solutions that isolate each deficiency and proposes solutions to enhance each of the two separately. In the last few years, from a sustainability perspective, emphasis is placed on developing an integrated system for buildings that will improve simultaneously both the structural integrity and the energy performance and should be preferred over individual actions. This study investigates independent building and/or retrofit actions applied for structural strengthening and energy performance improvements that have the potential to be combined into an integrated system to enhance the overall performance of buildings. Such multidisciplinary approach will ensure that new and existing buildings satisfy both structural safety and energy efficiency targets in a more economic and effective manner. Furthermore, as first step in this direction, an experimental test program was conducted in the laboratory to examine the benefit of applying thermal insulation in the form of polystyrene on the durability context by reducing the building’s material deterioration due to environmental effects.
Corrosion of the steel reinforcement is the main problem of reinforced concrete (RC) structures. Over the past decades, several methods have been developed aiming to detect the corrosion process early in order to minimise the structural damage and consequently the repairing costs. Emphasis was given in developing methods and techniques of non-destructive nature providing fast on-the-spot detection and covering large areas rather that concentrating on single locations. This study, investigates a non-destructive corrosion detection technique for reinforced concrete, which is based on infrared thermography and the difference in thermal characteristics of corroded and non-corroded steel rebars. The technique is based on the principle that corrosion products have poor heat conductivity, and they inhibit the diffusion of heat that is generated in the reinforcing bar due to heating. For the investigation RC specimens, have been constructed in the laboratory using embedded steel bars of different corrosion states. Afterward, one surface of the specimens was heated using an electric device while thermal images were captured at predefined time instants on the opposite surface with an IR camera. The test results showed a clear difference between the thermal characteristics of the corroded and the non-corroded samples, which demonstrates the potential of using thermography in corrosion detection in RC structures.
Corrosion of steel reinforcement is the major deterioration factor of the RC infrastructures. Several factors are contributing towards increasing the corrosion risk like the exposure and environmental conditions which are a function of the geographical location of the infrastructure. Information for these conditions and their affected areas can be proved valuable at design stage and/or during maintenance planning. This study aims to relate corrosion risk of RC infrastructures with their geographical location. The corrosion risk is quantified through data from NDT methods and subsequently correlated with its location. Therefore high risk areas with structures prone to corrosion deterioration are identified. The latter is implemented via GIS tools in order to create maps that describe how corrosion risk is related to the location of each structure. Two GIS methods are suggested, the grid system and the use of classified areas. Corrosion data has been collected from labs about various constructions in Cyprus and used in conjunction with GIS tools to provide useful information on corrosion identification. The outcome is a digitized map of the Limassol area which indicates the risks levels associated with corrosion of the steel reinforcement.
KEYWORDS: Bridges, Sensor networks, Sensors, Structural health monitoring, Inspection, Data acquisition, Data processing, Safety, Temperature metrology, Environmental monitoring
The deterioration of civil infrastructure and their subsequent maintenance is a significant problem for the responsible managing authorities. The ideal scenario is to detect deterioration and/or structural problems at early stages so that the maintenance cost is kept low and the safety of the infrastructure remains undisputed. The current inspection regimes implemented mostly via visual inspection are planned at specific intervals but are not always executed on time due to shortcomings in expert personnel and finance. However the introduction of technological advances in the assessment of infrastructures provides the tools to alleviate this problem. This study describes the assessment of a highway RC bridge's structural condition using remote structural health monitoring. A monitoring plan is implemented focusing on strain measurements; as strain is a parameter influenced by the environmental conditions supplementary data are provided from temperature and wind sensors. The data are acquired using wired sensors (deployed at specific locations) which are connected to a wireless sensor unit installed at the bridge. This WSN application enables the transmission of the raw data from the field to the office for processing and evaluation. The processed data are then used to assess the condition of the bridge. This case study, which is part of an undergoing RPF research project, illustrates that remote monitoring can alleviate the problem of missing structural inspections. Additionally, shows its potential to be the main part of a fully automated smart procedure of obtaining structural data, processed them and trigger an alarm when certain undesirable conditions are met.
The aims of the bridge management authorities are to ensure that bridges fulfil their purpose and functionality during their design life. So, it is important to identify and quantify the deterioration of the structural condition early so that a timely application of an intervention will avoid more serious problems and increased costs at a later stage. A measure to enhance the effectiveness of the existing structural evaluation by visual inspection is instrumental monitoring using sensors. The activities performed in this process belong to the field of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). The SHM offers opportunities for continuous or periodic monitoring on bridges and technological advances allow nowadays the employment of wireless sensors networks (WSN) for this task. A SHM application using WSN was implemented on a multi-span reinforced concrete (RC) highway bridge in Limassol with the objective to study its dynamic characteristics and performance. Part of the specific bridge will be replaced and this offered a unique opportunity for measurements before and after construction so that apparent changes in the dynamic characteristics of the bridge will be identified after the repairing work. The measurements provided indications on the frequencies and mode shapes of the bridge and the response amplitude during the passing of traffic. The latter enabled the investigation of the dependency of the bridge’s structural damping to the amplitude of vibration induced by the passing of traffic. The results showed that as the excitation increases the magnitude of modal damping increases as well.
The deterioration of structures due to corrosion is probably the most significant factor for their damaging condition and
the need for maintenance. Corrosion mechanisms depend on the environmental conditions and the geographic
characteristics of the area.
In this paper a condition assessment methodology is presented through an application on a deteriorated building in
Cyprus. The methodology's starting point is the collection of information through Google Earth for classification of
buildings in regions based on their environmental and geographic characteristics. Through this screening process,
buildings in each defined region are selected for evaluation. The following steps of the methodology include testing on
selected structural members for the estimation of the compression strength and the depth of carbonation.
The results of the case study, are used from the responsible engineer to evaluate the current condition of the building
regarding its structural integrity and the effect of corrosion. The testing data showed that the current building strength is
lower than the code's requirements and that carbonation induced corrosion must be addressed to prevent further damage.
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