Risk Based Civil SHM and Life Cycle Management

After initial success stories structural health monitoring saw some setback due to the miss match between costumer's expectations and practical performance. These deficits are mainly attributable to the fact that monitoring and engineering expertise for structures does not go hand in hand. Monitoring shall not replace visual inspection but rather improve it. Therefore it is essential that inspectors see the benefit from monitoring and apply it. Not enough has been done to offer them services in a way they need it and where the impact is clearly visible. SHM requires international guidelines, which structure the process from the initial concept to system installation, engineering services till the periodic maintenance and update activities. The co-existence with visual inspection and traditional methods has to be demonstrated. Finally the interface to the clients and owners has to be put into the focus of our community. They are neither interested in data nor in complicated explanations. They require information on which decisions can be made. This has to be targeted and concise expertise which fits into their working process. The paper will show how a monitoring process can lead to a condition assessment which is needed to improve the life cycle assessment.