Performance Analysis of WSN Deployments for Monitoring Structural Health of Buildings to Prevent Disasters in Ecuador

Published in: Global Partnerships for Development and Engineering Education: Proceedings of the 15th LACCEI International Multi-Conference for Engineering, Education and Technology
Date of Conference: July 19-21, 2017
Location of Conference: Boca Raton, FL, United States
Authors: Carlos Valdivieso, MS. (Escuela Superior Politécncia del Litoral (ESPOL), EC)
Daniel Dik, Bs. (Escuela Superior Politécncia del Litoral (ESPOL), EC)
Jorge Gomez, MS. (Escuela Superior Politécncia del Litoral (ESPOL), EC)
Francisco Novillo, PhD. (Escuela Superior Politécncia del Litoral (ESPOL), EC)
Full Paper: #105

Abstract:

Every important infrastructure should have a way to prevent disasters by the analysis of critical data taken from strategically placed sensors; due to its low cost and availability, wireless sensor networks (WSN) are suitable for applications involving structural safety of buildings and the development of a first alert disaster prevention system. With the recognition of the importance of structural safety, structure health monitoring (SHM) is now considered an important research topic in engineering. Unfortunately recent earthquakes in Ecuador have caused hundreds of casualties and infrastructure damages, even in cities like Guayaquil faraway from earthquake epicenters. This catastrophic situation alerted about several weaknesses that could be strengthen with new technological solutions like the deployment of WSN for structural health monitoring and disaster prevention. In this paper, a typical tall downtown building was selected and the design of a WSN that could be used for disaster preventions was proposed and their performance analysis was presented based on channel capacity under different noise backgrounds [1]. From here, an early warning system for natural disasters could be easily implemented to reliably diagnose the structure health of the mentioned building. In summary the major contribution of this work is to reinforce the need of having some kind of disaster protection for building infrastructures and provide through the analysis of the channel network capacity of a downtown building in Guayaquil, a first step toward the implementation of an early warning system for natural disasters that could save many lives, employing the cloud and available wireless technologies.