Developments in seismic instrumentation and health monitoring of structures in New Zealand

Abstract

New Zealand is one of the seismically active countries on the planet and it’s tectonic setting has featured many active faults. Strong motion monitoring has been carried out for about 40 years in New Zealand and recorded data on ground shaking as well as structural response. While the ground motion monitoring has been growing in scale over the years, just over a decade ago, a nationally significant structural monitoring program was established to record seismic response of typical structures that are representative of New Zealand building inventory. Monitoring with permanent instrumentation and continuous recording of data enable to perform short-term damage detection after an event as well as long-term effects in the health of the structure. The chapter will further discuss on the damage detection methods that were proposed and adopted using the records from instrumented structures in New Zealand. It will include a description around the new computational tools for damage identification and long-term dynamic monitoring. The toolkits provide functions for automated dynamic parameters and response amplitudes monitoring. The potential of these toolkits is illustrated using data collected by the continuous dynamic monitoring system installed on a full scale reinforced concrete bridge in Wellington, New Zealand.