Dear Colleagues,

Historical buildings such as churches, towers, and palaces represent a large component of European cultural and monumental heritage. As it is well known, most of these constructions are characterized by masonry load-bearing structures designed to withstand only gravity loads, with very limited—if any—earthquake resistance capacity. As a result, historical buildings are particularly prone to structural pathologies typically caused by differential foundation settlements, excessive live loads, and natural hazards such as seismic events. Inadequate maintenance policies over the years and the normal aging of building materials represent common aspects of the causes of the premature collapse of historic buildings.

The growing awareness among citizens and administrations on the critical role of cultural heritage constructions within the tourism industry and related sectors, as well as their historical and artistic values, has motivated the more frequent implementation of structural health monitoring (SHM) approaches. Such systems involve a large variety of sensing solutions that monitor structural performance during operational conditions, in a real-time fashion or rapidly after natural disasters such as earthquakes, with obvious benefits to the preservation of cultural heritage and human lives.

This Special Issue aims to collect original full papers, review articles, and short communications highlighting the latest advances in research on SHM applications to historical buildings. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Artificial intelligence;
• Structural performance evaluation;
• Damage identification;
• Condition-based maintenance;
• Early warning;
• Data-driven approaches;
• Data-fusion
• Model-based methodologies;
• Static and dynamic response parameter evaluation;
• Modal analysis;
• Novel sensing technologies;
• Optimal sensor placement;
• Field applications.

Dr. Andrea Meoni
Dr. Giacomo Zini
Dr. Enrique García Macías
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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