Summary:
The structural health of historic heritage elements in ports is a fundamental challenge for preserving the cultural and architectural wealth they represent, especially in the face of the growing threat of adverse weather events, the passage of time and the effects of climate change. Ports, in addition to being essential nodes of economic activity, are also custodians of historical structures that have witnessed centuries of interaction between humans and the sea.
In this context, the action of natural phenomena such as storm surges, coastal erosion, flooding and changes in weather patterns intensifies the deterioration of these infrastructures, exacerbated by factors such as salinity and environmental pollution. Protecting the structural health of these elements not only implies their physical conservation, but also their integration into a sustainable framework that makes port activity compatible with heritage preservation. This is essential to ensure the resilience of these infrastructures in the face of climatic challenges and their function as symbols of cultural identity and historical development.
Specifically, within the Plan of Conservation and Enhancement of Historical Heritage under the Port Authority of the Bay of Algeciras (hereinafter APBA), one of the challenges posed by the Port of Tarifa is to find solutions to perform a non-intrusive monitoring of the structural health of one of the elements of the port historical heritage more identity of the port, as is the monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that tops the nose of the breakwater, the work of sculptor José Capuz and which was erected in 1944. All this, with the aim of analyzing disruptive and innovative solutions that allow to respond to (1) tracking, monitoring and evolution of the displacements and seats of the sculpture, (2) have threshold information of the level of risk and vulnerability, and (3) analyze the progression of the indicators of displacements and seats, obtaining a detailed analysis of the stability and structural health of the set that allows the APBA to detect possible movements and act in advance if any risk of failure is detected in the structure that may affect the monument.
In this sense, the APBA has acquired an innovative solution developed by Deep Insight, a spin-off of the ETSI Caminos, Canales y Puertos of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, a company specialized in the development of advanced monitoring systems in the maritime and port field and in offering integrated services to support risk management in multiple sectors of professional activity.
The scope of the project consists of the deployment of a non-intrusive monitoring system, based on IoT nanosensorics, capable of monitoring deformations, oscillations and vibrations produced to the structure in high frequency by oceanic weather variables, from advanced and complementary techniques of GPS-PPK and accelerometers (static and dynamic fields).
This system will be used to study the relationship between the actions of the physical environment and the behavior of the structure. For this purpose, the results will be crossed with the oceanic meteorological conditions at that moment (waves, long wave, agitation, wind, temperature) so that a complete cause-effect analysis can be made on the structure.
Additionally, there will be a proprietary platform for data exploitation and real-time visualization of the different monitoring KPIs, a data query API for integration into third-party platforms, and an e-mail alert service for events in the monitoring data.
Expected results:
- Develop a digital tool for active monitoring of the monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus of the Port of Tarifa.
- Improve the preventive maintenance of the historical heritage elements of the Port of Tarifa.
- Support decision making in the management of risk and vulnerability of elements of the port infrastructure.
- Support the conservation of the cultural and architectural richness of the port facilities.
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