Monitoring – Aubagne street, Marseille | France

A dramatic collapse

Following the collapse of three buildings in the historic city centre of Marseille on 5 November 2018, the city of Marseille evacuated 30 buildings on Rue d’Aubagne and a safety perimeter was established by the naval fire service.

An expert committee was formed. Its priority was to provide technical analysis to avoid any further accidents and permit the search for victims. Its next objective was to help the City of Marseille to secure the area, assess the possibility of permitting residents to collect personal effects and move out of or return to their homes.

In order to allow the committee of experts and naval fire-fighters to work in complete safety, the City of Marseille contacted Sixense to urgently set up a system to test the areas adjacent to the collapsed buildings.

Urgent intervention

Sixense immediately responded to the City of Marseille’s request by dispatching two engineers to the site to set up a monitoring system, with assistance from the fire-fighters, comprising two Cyclops (motorised total station theodolites) and 100 prisms targets installed on approximately 30 buildings.

Sixense was rapidly able to establish an operational monitoring system and provide the first data within 60 hour (2 and a half days)  of receiving the customer’s call. The work of the experts and the naval fire-fighters was therefore able to resume in record time.

After four months of monitoring, the results of our measurements enabled the experts to declare some of the neighbouring buildings to be to stable and authorise the evacuees to return to their homes.