A Methodology for Integrative Documentation and Characterization of Culturally Important Statues to Support Seismic Analysis

Abstract

Motivated by observations from recent earthquakes, and in an effort to understand the seismic response of culturally important statues, a methodology is proposed for an integrative approach to document culturally important statues, which combines both engineering parameters and visualization. Documentation includes surface and material, geometric and visual, and boundary condition surveys as well as three dimensional digital reconstructions. Reconstruction facilitates attainment of geometric and mass properties using data from terrestrial laser scanning and structure-from-motion three dimensional reconstruction. The proposed methodology is applied to a representative number (24) of statues in Florence, Italy using a field survey in 2011. The majority of the statues are determined to be freestanding on rough pedestals with high aspect ratios and limited motion restriction. Using the documentation and simplified characterization obtained from these studies, it is envisioned that the seismic vulnerability and response of statues may be estimated, knowing the statues’ locations and anticipated earthquake demands at the site (building or free-field).