RESEARCH ARTICLE
Seismic Retrofitting and Health Monitoring of School Buildings of Cyprus
C.Z. Chrysostomou1, N. Kyriakides1, A.J. Kappos2, 3, L. Kouris3, E. Georgiou4, M. Millis5
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 7
First Page: 208
Last Page: 220
Publisher ID: TOBCTJ-7-208
DOI: 10.2174/1874836801307010208
Article History:
Received Date: 22/7/2013Revision Received Date: 9/12/2013
Acceptance Date: 10/12/2013
Electronic publication date: 27/12/2013
Collection year: 2013
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The vulnerability of existing buildings to seismic forces and their retrofitting is an international problem. The majority of structures in seismic-prone areas worldwide are structures that have been designed either without the consideration of seismic forces, or with previous codes of practice specifying lower levels of seismic forces. In Cyprus, after the three earthquakes that occurred in 1995, 1996, and 1999, the Cyprus State, acting in a pioneering way internationally, has decided the seismic retrofitting of all school buildings, taking into account the sensitivity of the society towards these structures, which house the future generation of the society. In this paper the overall assessment methodology is presented, along with details of the over 10 year ongoing retrofitting program of the school buildings of Cyprus, with emphasis on the description of the program and the development of a wireless monitoring system. In addition, mathematical models of selected school buildings are presented and comparison is made with in-situ measurement.