Overview
The COST Action TU1402 has been active from 2014 to 2019 and a joint effort of 29 European Countries, China, USA and Australia with participants from academia, industry and infrastructure owners, operator and authorities.
The main objective of the COST Action TU1402 on Quantifying the Value of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has been to facilitate sustainable societal developments through improvements of resource efficiency, productivity, robustness, reliability and safety in the design and assets management for structures and infrastructure systems by optimised Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems.
The Action has, in the perspective of sustainable societal developments, provided:
- The scientific evidence of a high value of SHM and its boundary conditions,
- An industrial and societal impact for the infrastructure design and management,
- Accessibility to the scientific field for quantifying the value of SHM.
The evidence and impact of a targeted and optimal utilization of SHM - provided by the quantification of its value - constitutes a significant (a) risk reduction by robustness, reliability and safety enhancement (societal value) and (b) expected operational expenditure reduction (industrial value) for the infrastructure system design, operation and asset management of up to 90%. This high value of SHM is subjected to the relevance and optimization (before implementation) of SHM strategies as part of an infrastructure system design, operation and management decision scenario.
Funding
Results
The deliverables of the COST Action TU1402 are approaches, methods and tools for quantifying the value of structural health monitoring together with guidelines, dedicated dissemination activities and a website, which documents the activities and results.
Beyond the specific results of TU1402, significant insights for innovation, resource efficiency and sustainability of infrastructure systems have been gained. The TU1402 results facilitate innovation in the context of digitalization, industry 4.0 and the utilization of big data for infrastructure system design, operation and asset management. The innovation of SHM systems is guided with value of SHM analyses towards achieving a high industrial and societal value. TU1402 has provided the basis for a resource efficient and sustainable infrastructure system management by using active safety with SHM systems instead of material costly and unsustainable passive safety. New research fields have emerged out of TU1402, such as e.g. value of information analysis in conjunction with resilience, sustainability and security measure optimization for terrorist attacks. It is foreseen and there are first indications that TU1402 results are taken up in other fields of science and engineering. TU1402 has provided the basis for a continuing worldwide research, engineering and standardization network and organization.