The Focus Group “Data-informed Decisions for Structures and Infrastructures” comprises as principal investigators Hans Fischer Fellow Prof. Eleni Chatzi (ETH Zürich) and her host Prof. Daniel Straub (TUM).
Adverse operational conditions, aging and deterioration are, among others, some of the main threats that structures and infrastructure systems are subjected to throughout their life-cycle. The technological advancements in developing sensors, capable of providing diversified measurements of structural response (e.g. accelerations, strains, temperatures, loads, etc), have lead to vast scientific and practical developments in the field of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Various techniques for translating the raw measurement data into indicators of structural “health” have been made readily available.
Despite these technological advancements, visual inspection still remains the primary, and oftentimes sole, means for condition-based assessment, in the current approach to infrastructure operation and maintenance. SHM systems may be exploited as a complementary source of information on the condition of a system and may serve for supporting decisions regarding the management of infrastructures throughout their life-cycle. However, it is currently difficult to quantify the effect of SHM on optimal operation and maintenance and hence on the total life-cycle cost. The goal of the Focus Group’s project is the development of a framework, which employs efficient methods and tools, able to quantify and optimize the Value of Information (VoI) from the SHM systems.
Figure 1: Influence diagram of the SHM analysis process as presented in: Straub, Chatzi, Bismut et al. (2017). Value of information: A roadmap to quantifying the benefit of structural health monitoring. ICOSSAR – 12th International Conference on Structural Safety.
TUM-IAS funded doctoral candidate:
Antonis Kamariotis, Engineering Risk Analysis Group