Seismic isolation: past, present and the importance of SHM for the future

The number of structures protected by seismic isolation is increasing all over the world, for both new structures and retrofits. New technologies had been first used for strategic and relevant structures, for which a higher level of safety is required, while the additional cost, which their use could determine, cut down the application to residential buildings. In this paper, an overview of the historical use of the isolation concepts and a selected list of the main applications of seismic isolation in the world are presented, with particular focus on the application in Italy. The suitability of seismic isolation for the protection of structures against earthquakes has already been demonstrated during strong earthquakes, when base-isolated buildings reported no damage. Obviously, structural health monitoring systems would give suitable information about the actual behaviour of base-isolated structures, also during low magnitude earthquakes. The experimental data obtained during the recent seismic sequence in Italy pointed out the importance of studying in deep the effective behaviour also in these cases. © 2017, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.