Quantifying the Benefits of Structural Health Monitoring Using Value of Information and Decision Risk Modeling

Abstract

The primary objective of the structural health monitoring (SHM) system is to continuously oversee and assess the state of the structure and evaluate its integrity at any time based on the appropriate analysis of in situ measured data. Therefore, among other things, an SHM system is an information-gathering mechanism. Gathering the information that is representative of the structural state and correctly analyzing the data help us better understand the state of the structure and mitigate possible losses by taking appropriate actions. However, the design, installation, maintenance, research, and development of an SHM system is an expensive endeavor. Therefore, agreeing to pay for new information is rationally justified if the reduction in the expected losses by new information is more than the intrinsic cost of the information-acquiring mechanism. We investigate the economic advantage of installing an SHM system for damage detection as well as risk and life-cycle management by using the value of information analysis. Among many possible choices of SHM system designs, preposterior decision analysis can be used to pick the most feasible design that can be installed on the structure. We demonstrate the framework on a miter gate application.