Real-time Urban Seismic Network and Structural Monitoring by means of accelerometric sensors Application to the historic buildings of Catania (Italy) Antonino D’Alessandro, Giovanni Vitale, Salvatore Scudero, Roberto D’Anna, Giuseppe Passafiume, Luca Greco, Stefano Speciale Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia Centro Nazionale Terremoti Rome, Italy Domenico Patanè, Orazio Torrisi, Sergio Di Prima, Salvatore Magiagli, Giuseppina Tusa Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia Osservatorio Etneo Catania, Italy Abstract—A real-time urban seismic network for seismic and structural health monitoring is being installed in the city of Catania (Sicily, Italy). The 27 monitoring stations, specifically designed and assembled, equipped with a low-noise 3-axial MEMS accelerometer, are located in 23 high exposure and vulnerability buildings. In this paper we present the characteristics of the monitoring station and of the network. In case of strong seismic events, the system will provide shake maps to the emergency management centre, and will allow to assess the health conditions of the monitored buildings. The network is conceived to be further expandable over the whole historical city centre of the city of Catania. Keywords—Seismic monitoring; seismic hazard; Structural Health Monitoring; MEMS sensors, acceleration measurement I. INTRODUCTION In the framework of an agreement between the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia and the Municipality of Catania, a prototypal urban seismic network including 27 nodes represented by relevant public buildings (Fig. 1) is being installed in historical city centre of Catania (Sicily, Italy). The city of Catania, with a population of more than 300,000 people, is considered one of the city with the greatest seismic risk in the whole Italy. In fact, the city of Catania has been stricken by strong earthquake several time during history: 1169, 1542, 1693, 1818 are the dates of the main events which reached I max up to X MCS [1]. According to the seismic hazard map of Italy, the city of Catania is among the areas where the highest peak ground accelerations are expected in the whole country [2]. Considering the high exposure and the high vulnerability, the monitoring network is designed both for real-time seismic monitoring and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) purposes. SHM is a fundamental tool to integrate and support conservation strategies of infrastructures and to preserve their strategic function (i.e. security, management, organization) and the architectural heritage. At present, real-time seismic networks and SHM systems have little applications because of the costs, and of the logistic difficulties to maintain long-term campaigns with the traditional instrumentations. Such structural conditions also inevitably lead to poor technical and scientific results. The Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology helps to overcome the limitations, enabling low-cost and small-size devices to be installed in large-scale or high-density applications [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Fig. 1. Location map of the monitoring stations in the city centre of Catania, Italy.