Athens Acropolis walls instrumentation

The walls of the Acropolis have suffered severe damage due to environmental causes and human interventions during its long history. Successive additions, remodelling, repairs and other interventions, numerous earthquakes, bombardments, sieges and time itself, inevitably causing structural ageing, have caused damages and structural condition deteriorations which pose serious risks of structural failure.

For the investigation of the Acropolis walls’ structural behavior, the Acropolis Restoration Service of the Ministry of Culture introduced an instrumented health monitoring project. A network of FBG sensors was therefore installed on the Acropolis North, South and East walls. The sensors’ network is constantly providing us with information on the walls’ deformation status and their critical areas’ condition, enabling their structural evaluation and the introduction of alarm values.