Structural Health Monitoring and infrastructure automation

Structural Health Monitoring is nowadays one of the preferred research topics in structural engineering disciplines but practical applications are still behind, at least in civil engineering. The paper is aimed at arguing about the reasons because practical applications still encounter difficulties in becoming a standard practice in civil engineering and about the capabilities of SHM not yet exploited. One of the reasons resides in the low economical appeal that the installation of SHM systems frequently have, at least in the short term. Consequently, the main focus of the paper, in order to overcome such disadvantage, is put on the lack of integration of SHM system with building and infrastructure automation systems. The characteristics of these systems will be briefly reviewed and the added value of performing integrated functions will be pointed out. Indeed, modern asset management in building and infrastructure is becoming a very complex technological field as the need for minimization of energy consumption, reduction of CO2 emissions, minimization of operational costs an maximization of the availability during maintenance is becoming the more and more important. Integration of monitoring systems providing information supported decision capabilities will pave the way to the realization of smart asset management systems for infrastructure. The paper will also present an approach for establishing a roadmap towards such goal.