A low cost multi-sensor approach for early warning in structural monitoring of buildings and structures

Early warning systems (EWS) for the structural monitoring of buildings and structures have a notable impact for the safety of the same structures and of the populations. These systems have significantly increased with the availability of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which represent a low cost, but a reliable solution, to perform the real-time monitoring task. The main goal of this work is the realization of a customized multi-sensor node, based on a WSN, suitable for the implementation of a distributed EWS for the structural monitoring of buildings and structures. The proposed solution uses two inclinometers and one triaxial accelerometer, a microcontroller platform and a ZigBee communication tool for data communications. To allow a context-adaptive architecture of the developed system, three operating mode have been defined: stand-alone, continuous data transfer, and mixed mode. The storage capability of acquired data was also implemented.