SHM of civil structures: expectations and perspectives

In the last years, SHM has been the subject of intensive developments also in civil engineer-ing. In practical applications, this has however resulted in complex instrumentation systems, difficult to be efficiently designed and expensive to be installed and maintained. Different approaches and a large variety of data interpretation tools have also been developed and applied. However, the issue of reliability of damage identification is still an open question. Due to the above situations, the use of SHM is still far from becoming a standard practice. The paper reviews the main achievements in the SHM discipline and the corresponding perspectives in view of practical applications. Research areas able to improve the effectiveness of SHM in the civil engineering field and to meet the expectations of potential users are addressed. The improvement in the reliability of monitored vs. conventional structures and its potential impact on design codes is also taken into account.