VoI-informed decision-making for SHM system arrangement

Structural health monitoring systems have been widely implemented to provide real-time continuous data support and to ensure structural safety in the context of structural integrity management. However, the quantification of the potential benefits of structural health monitoring systems has not yet attracted widespread attention. At the same time, there is an urgent need to develop strategies, such as optimizing the monitoring period, monitoring variables, and other factors, to maximize the potential benefits of structural health monitoring systems. Considering the continuity of structural health monitoring information, a framework is developed in this article to support decision-making for structural health monitoring systems arrangement in the context of structural integrity management, which integrates the concepts of value of information and risk-based inspection planning based on an approach which utilizes a conjugate prior probability distribution for updating of the probabilistic models of structural performances based on structural health monitoring information. An example considering fatigue degradation of steel structures is investigated to illustrate the application of the proposed framework. The considered example shows that the choice of monitoring variables, the monitoring period, and the monitoring quality may be consistently optimized by the application of the proposed framework and approach. Finally, discussions and conclusions are provided to clarify the potential benefits of the proposed framework with a special view to practical applications of structural health monitoring systems.