Quantifying the Benefits of Smart Technologies in a Life-Cycle Context

This paper investigates how the cost of structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies competitively fits into the life-cycle management of civil infrastructure. After a brief review of the aging infrastructure problem and a discussion of the technological, organizational, and societal complexities present, the need for synergistic adoptions-in-concert of common metrics, methods, and means of communication is addressed to develop a supporting platform upon which SHM systems can be developed and implemented. Using the costs associated with a recent bridge collapse, methods for the quantification of the utility of SHM are demonstrated. These methods include expanding upon existing and accepted practices, employing risk-based decision making, and calculating the benefit of monitoring in reliability-based life-cycle management models.