Learning from experience: Analysis of the civil litigation regarding building structures on the court of bologna in the years 2011/2012

The present work is aimed to the study and the analysis of the defects detected in the civil structure and that are object of civil litigation in order to create an instruments capable of helping the different actor involved in the building process. It is divided in three main sections. The first part is focused on the collection of the data related to the civil proceeding of the 2012 and the development of in depth analysis of the main aspects regarding the defects on existing buildings. The research center “Osservatorio Claudio Ceccoli” developed a system for the collection of the information coming from the civil proceedings of the Court of Bologna. Statistical analysis are been performed and the results are been shown and discussed in the first chapters.The second part analyzes the main issues emerged during the study of the real cases, related to the activities of the technical consultant. The idea is to create documents, called “focus”, addressed to clarify and codify specific problems in order to develop guidelines that help the technician editing of the technical advice.The third part is centered on the estimation of the methods used for the collection of data. The first results show that these are not efficient. The critical analysis of the database, the result and the experience and throughout, allowed the implementation of the collection system for the data.

Collection and real-time analysis of images from aircraft to support civil protection operational activities

This report describes the realization of a system, in which an object detection model will be implemented, whose aim is to detect the presence of people in images. This system could be used for several applications: for example, it could be carried on board an aircraft or a drone. In this case, the system is designed in such a way that it can be mounted on light/medium weight helicopters, helping the operator to find people in emergency situations. In the first chapter the use of helicopters for civil protection is analysed and applications similar to this case study are listed. The second chapter describes the choice of the hardware devices that have been used to implement a prototype of a system to collect, analyse and display images. At first, the PC necessary to process the images was chosen, based on the characteristics of the algorithms that are necessary to run the analysis. In the further, a camera that could be compatible with the PC was selected. Finally, the battery pack was chosen taking into account the electrical consumption of the devices. The third chapter illustrates the algorithms used for image analysis. In the fourth, some of the requirements listed in the regulations that must be taken into account for carrying on board all the devices have been briefly analysed. In the fifth chapter the activity of design and modelling, with the CAD Solidworks, the devices and a prototype of a case that will house them is described. The sixth chapter discusses the additive manufacturing, since the case was printed exploiting this technology. In the seventh chapter, part of the tests that must be carried out on the equipment to certificate it have been analysed, and some simulations have been carried out. In the eighth chapter the results obtained once loaded the object detection model on a hardware for image analyses were showed. In the ninth chapter, conclusions and future applications were discussed.