Per una ‘quantificazione’ del monitoraggio strutturale, strumento di programmazione e tutela

The aim of this paper is to present the potentiality of monitoring analysis in defining a reliable strategy of seismic protection and structural restoration of cultural heritage. The recent technical laws for the protection of historic buildings in seismic areas (DPCM 2011) have partially changed the concepts of ‘safety’, recovering – for ancient structures – methods of analysis based on the empirical definition of local mechanisms of instability instead of global numerical modelling techniques. This fact implies the necessity to thoroughly observe the possible damage of the ancient structures, in order to better comprehend their movements. In step with this, a great importance has given by this laws to ‘structural monitoring’, which represents the modern translation of the ancient empirical method. In this work the effective role of monitoring in the global process of seismic protection for cultural heritage is analysed, in reference to its ‘numerical translation’ foreseen by the law in the global formulas for seismic action evaluation. In step with this, some discrepancies between the qualitative and quantitative role of ‘structural monitoring’ are stressed and a final correction is proposed in order to formally recognize, also from the quantitative point of view, the importance of monitoring as instrument of cultural heritage conservation.