Structural Damage and Risk Assessment and Uncertainty Quantification

This article concentrates on the interplay between structural damage and risk assessment on one hand and numerical techniques, especially for uncertainty quantification, on the other hand. It shows the connection between damage assessment and risk quantification, touching on the methods of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). It then details on how to initially asses the damage, which by necessity will involve some uncertainty, and how to update that initial assessment through additional testing. This is essential a statistical system identification process. The decision making process of finding whether the structure should be repaired or demolished is also mentioned shortly. It should involve a cost/benefit appraisal in the light of the information gained on the extent of the damage. Especially if the damage was caused by environmental forces, e.g. such as seismic action, it may be advantageous to determine the characteristic of this external action which caused the damage. This is a similar problem to the system identification of the structure, only that the testing is purely computational. Having identified the cause and the extent of the damage, one may want to draw lessons as to mitigate the hazard due future extreme environmental effect, in the form of robust design, minimizing vulnerability of life-lines and the fragility of structures.