EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The MEMSCON Decision-Support-Syatem (DSS) is designed to help you evaluate the damage and decide on proactive rehabilitation and rehabilitation after an earthquake event in reinforced concrete buildings.Additionally, this DSS determines the structural condition of a building in predetermined time intervals of 4 months and after an earthquake and includes:

    A ‘Condition Assessment Based on Strain Measurements’ module  that receives input every 4 months from strain sensors positioned at the bottom cross sections of the columns of the ground floor and processes it to derive the internal forces which are compared to limit values in order to determine the structural adequacy of the monitored cross-sections. The internal forces are used to determine the differential displacements of the foundation nodes and the active live load. Based on these, the global structural condition of the building and the possible need for proactive maintenance is determined.
    A ‘Condition Assessment Based on Acceleration Measurements’ module that receives input from the acceleration sensors during an earthquake and processes it to estimate: the maximum differential displacements between consecutive floors derived after double integration in respect to time of the monitored acceleration time history that is compared to the maximum design elastic displacements; the resulting internal forces; damage and possible need for rehabilitation.
    A ‘Rehabilitation Options and Costs’ Module that receives input from the above modules to select the best intervention.
    An Expert System for the integration of different modules with a flexible user interface.
    A knowledge base that contains domain and system knowledge, a sensor DB, a history DB that includes unit models of all building elements together with their initial design values and records on problems and solutions, an external data DB that includes data on rehabilitation costs.

You can use MEMSCON DSS to invoke all modules as required and see all necessary data (input, output) displayed. You will be able to estimate the present structural condition of the building and building components and to experiment with scenarios in order to estimate the possible structural condition of the building and building components based on the input of the scenario. Moreover, you will be able to see what are the strains in the various monitored sections, what was the history of accelerations during an earthquake , what is the structural condition of the building and building components after an earthquake, what is the optimal building intervention under operating loads, what would be the optimal building intervention after an earthquake.

The present document is the System Guide and User Manual for the developed MEMSCON DSS.

The major sections of the User’s Manual are:

    General Information

The general purpose of the overall system and contact information are presented.

    System Summary

A general overview of the system is provided to outline its uses.

    Getting Started

This section presents the installation process and an overview of the features and tools.

    A Building Example

A walkthrough of the system from initiation through exit is provided by an example case.

    Rehabilitation Module

This section is a detailed presentation of the rehabilitation module.