EXPO 02, Piazza Pinocchio: Monitoring visitor's live loads

Once every generation, Switzerland treats itself to a National Exhibition commissioned by the Swiss Confederation. Expo 02 was spread out in five "Arteplage" over a whole region: the land of the three lakes, on the shores of the lakes of Biel, Murten and Neuchâtel, which are located in the northwest of Switzerland. Each "Arteplage" relates to a theme, which is reflected in its architectures and exhibitions. The "Arteplage" of Neuchâtel was related to "Nature and Artificiality"; A big steel-wood whale eating a village represents the fairy tale named "Pinocchio" from the Italian writer Collodi. The "Piazza Pinocchio" was built together with other exposition buildings on one large artificial peninsula. The belly of the whale holds the exposition dedicated to robotic and artificial intelligence, while the rest of the village was developed on two floors with steel piles / beams and wood walls and floors. A fiber optic sensor system was commissioned to monitor the visitor's loads over the whole "Piazza Pinocchio". The main requirements were: real-time computer-screen figure-form results of the live loads during 18 hours a day, automatic thermal-induced strain compensation, real-time warnings and pre-warnings for each single pile, automatic phone call advises when reaching warning thresholds and remote monitoring for complete management of the monitoring system. The SOFO system based on low coherence fiber optic deformation sensors was selected to carry out the requirements. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the project, the installation solution, the results, and data analysis of the installed monitoring system.