Urban Vibrations & their Effects upon Built Heritage: Measurements, Characterization, & Simulations

Thanks to advancements in methods, computer power, and recording technologies, seismic ambient noise provides today valuable information for monitoring, imaging, and structural assessment. The numerous sources of vibration that can be recorded in the urban environment both at ground level and on buildings represent a complex and largely unexplored field. Indeed, such urban vibrations may excite buildings in various ways, generating discomfort, structural damage and fatigue related issues. The presence of close high-rise constructions may even perturb the wave field with their resonances, generating complex phenomena such as clustering effects and dynamic soil-structure interaction. The recent development of new advanced instruments to measure ground torsional vibrations may help to better investigate detrimental torsional effect upon buildings.

The characterization of such urban vibrations, and their use for structural dynamic identification and structural health monitoring, initiated an emerging, new, cross-disciplinary field known as urban seismology engaging seismologists, structural engineers and numerical analysts.

To cover this topic and to provide a well-documented reference in this field, authors are invited to submit their recent research results to this Research Topic

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to:

• Experimental continuous seismic monitoring campaigns.
• Seismic interferometric techniques.
• Numerical tools for the structural dynamic identification.
• Numerical Operational Modal Analysis techniques.
• Damage detection methods.
• Dispersive wave propagation in buildings.
• Wave method for structural health monitoring.
• Clustering Effect of Structures.
• Structure–soil–structure interaction.
• Torsional ground motions characterization and related effects upon buildings.
• Fatigue effects due to ambient vibrations.
• Discomfort Effects on buildings due to ambient vibrations.