This paper presents a research work in which the stability of a multi-storeyed building in reinforced concrete, with two visible macrocracks periodically subjected to visual inspection, is assessed by the acoustic emission (AE) technique. The observed proportionality between the rates of recorded AE activity from the cracks and the measured crack growth rates confirms significantly the effectiveness of the AE technique for damage evolution assessment in structural elements. The AE activity has been correlated with the size of the source crack advancements by some fitting relationships established using models from Damage Mechanics, Fracture Mechanics and Geophysics. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.