Achieving user-centric structural health monitoring: an integrated development approach

Structural health monitoring systems (SHMSs) can be applied for a variety of reasons. In the research community, they are commonly used to evaluate a civil engineering structure, to validate new theories or to implement new hardware. However, SHMSs are becoming more common in the construction industry, where they are applied as decision support systems and to enhance maintenance and management. As a definition, structural health monitoring is the procedure in which measurement, analysis and visualisation is used to enhance structural evaluation, assessment, decision making and validation of a civil engineering structure. The current SHMS development approach starts with a structure and focuses primarily on the hardware, such as sensors and system architecture. A new approach that takes into account the end user, the persons or organisations that use the information from SHMSs, is proposed. Following this approach, the development process and objectives of SHMSs are evaluated, a modular system architecture for future SHMSs is proposed, visualisation development is discussed, and a three-tiered experience-based user interface is proposed.