A practical guide on the quantification of value of information gained by structural health monitoring and application to historic masonry structures

Abstract

Structural health monitoring (SHM) projects are mostly based on semi-empirical decisions, emphasising the importance of the structure and lacking a rational comparison of the benefits and costs. The present work offers guidance to overcome this, based on an objective framework using the quantification of the value of SHM in an engineering context. Firstly, procedures for practising engineers are outlined on the basis of the COST guidelines. Secondly, a case study, focused on the reliability of a historic masonry structure, demonstrates the optimisation of surveys based on non-destructive tests calibrated by destructive tests. Both the outlined procedures and case study are carefully prepared and in tune, so the reader can easily understand the feasibility of the framework. Decisions on the utilisation of SHM in practical applications can be effectively achieved based on the highest expected utility gained by SHM. For this, two scenarios are needed: (i) a scenario with at least one SHM strategy and (ii) a scenario without any SHM.

Keywords:

• Decision-making
• guidelines
• historic masonry
• optimisation
• structural health monitoring
• tests
• uncertainty
• value of information

Acknowledgements

COST Action TU1402 on Quantifying the Value of Structural Health Monitoring is gratefully acknowledged for networking.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study is a part of Grant LTT18003 supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.