Machine Learning for Risk and Resilience Assessment in Structural Engineering: Progress and Future Trends

Population growth, economic development, and rapid urbanization in many areas have led to increased exposure and vulnerability of structural and infrastructure systems to hazards. Thus, developing risk-based assessment and management tools is crucial for stakeholders and the general public to make informed decisions on prehazard planning and posthazard recovery. To this end, structural risk and resilience assessment has been an ongoing research topic in the past 20 years. Recently, machine learning (ML) techniques have been shown as promising tools for advancing the risk and resilience assessment of structure and infrastructure systems. To date, however, there is a lack of a holistic review on ML progress across various branches of structural engineering; an in-depth analysis of literature that can provide a timely evaluation of risk and resilience assessment methods of the built environment, where different types of structural and infrastructure facilities are interconnected. For this reason, this study conducted a comprehensive review on ML for risk and resilience assessment in four main branches of structural engineering (buildings, bridges, pipelines, and electric power systems). To cover the crucial modules in the prevailing risk and resilience assessment frameworks, existing literature is thoroughly examined and characterized in terms of six attributes of ML, including method, task type, data source, analysis scale, event type, and topic area. Moreover, limitations and challenges are identified, and future research needs are highlighted to move forward the frontiers of ML for structural risk and resilience assessment.