Structural Health Monitoring Through Advanced Artificial Intelligence

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Building Structures".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 1622

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Civil Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
Interests: structural control; advanced large-scale structural testing; smart structures; earthquake engineering
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan
Interests: structural health monitoring; artificial intelligence; information theory; bridge engineering; smart structural control
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The rapidly emerging field of resilient and smart cities is redefining urban development and preserving existing infrastructure against natural hazards. Central to this field is structural health monitoring through advanced artificial intelligence, which involves the use of networked sensing and monitoring to collect and analyze vast amounts of data from sensors and digital images. Artificial intelligence methodologies, including machine learning, have shown superiority in model updating, diagnostics, data interpretation, and damage detection. These advancements are transforming traditional SHM approaches, making them more efficient and accurate. With the integration of technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), and big data analytics, structural health monitoring can be advanced and significantly improved, offering better damage assessment, precise localization, and enhanced monitoring capabilities. Therefore, structural health monitoring through advanced artificial intelligence is needed to ensure the longevity, reliability, and performance of structures.

Dr. Chia-Ming Chang
Prof. Dr. Tzu-Kang Lin
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • structural health monitoring
  • artificial intelligence
  • machine learning
  • damage detection
  • feature extraction
  • system identification
  • lifecycle assessment
  • real-time monitoring
  • advanced monitoring techniques

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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19 pages, 2577 KB  
Article
Damage Detection of Seismically Excited Buildings Using Neural Network Arrays with Branch Pruning Optimization
by Jau-Yu Chou, Chia-Ming Chang and Chieh-Yu Liu
Buildings 2025, 15(12), 2052; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15122052 - 14 Jun 2025
Viewed by 592
Abstract
In structural health monitoring, visual inspection remains vital for detecting damage, especially in concealed elements such as columns and beams. To improve damage localization, many studies have investigated and implemented deep learning into damage detection frameworks. However, the practicality of such models is [...] Read more.
In structural health monitoring, visual inspection remains vital for detecting damage, especially in concealed elements such as columns and beams. To improve damage localization, many studies have investigated and implemented deep learning into damage detection frameworks. However, the practicality of such models is often limited by their computational demands, and the relative accuracy may suffer if input features lack sensitivity to localized damage. This study introduces an efficient method for estimating damage locations and severity in buildings using a neural network array. A synthetic dataset is first generated from a simplified building model that includes floor flexural behavior and reflects the target dynamics of the structures. A dense, single-layer neural network array is initially trained with full floor accelerations, then pruned iteratively via the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis to retain only the most effective sub-networks. Subsequently, critical event measurements are input into the pruned array to estimate story-wise stiffness reductions. The approach is validated through numerical simulation of a six-story model and further verified via shake table tests on a scaled twin-tower steel-frame building. Results show that the pruned neural network array based on the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis achieves high accuracy in identifying stiffness reductions while significantly reducing computational load and outperforming full-input models in both efficiency and precision. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring Through Advanced Artificial Intelligence)
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Review

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38 pages, 1954 KB  
Review
Bridge Structural Health Monitoring: A Multi-Dimensional Taxonomy and Evaluation of Anomaly Detection Methods
by Omar S. Sonbul and Muhammad Rashid
Buildings 2025, 15(19), 3603; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings15193603 - 8 Oct 2025
Viewed by 478
Abstract
Bridges are critical to national mobility and economic flow, making dependable structural health monitoring (SHM) systems essential for safety and durability. However, the SHM data quality is often affected by sensor faults, transmission noise, and environmental interference. To address these issues, anomaly detection [...] Read more.
Bridges are critical to national mobility and economic flow, making dependable structural health monitoring (SHM) systems essential for safety and durability. However, the SHM data quality is often affected by sensor faults, transmission noise, and environmental interference. To address these issues, anomaly detection methods are widely adopted. Despite their wide use and variety, there is a lack of systematic evaluation that comprehensively compares these techniques. Existing reviews are often constrained by limited scope, minimal comparative synthesis, and insufficient focus on real-time performance and multivariate analysis. Consequently, this systematic literature review (SLR) analyzes 36 peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2025, sourced from eight reputable databases. Unlike prior reviews, this work presents a novel four-dimensional taxonomy covering real-time capability, multivariate support, analysis domain, and detection methods. Moreover, detection methods are further classified into three categories: distance-based, predictive, and image processing. A comparative evaluation of the reviewed detection methods is performed across five key dimensions: robustness, scalability, real-world deployment feasibility, interpretability, and data dependency. Findings reveal that image-processing methods are the most frequently applied (22 studies), providing high detection accuracy but facing scalability challenges due to computational intensity. Predictive models offer a trade-off between interpretability and performance, whereas distance-based methods remain less common due to their sensitivity to dimensionality and environmental factors. Notably, only 11 studies support real-time anomaly detection, and multivariate analysis is often overlooked. Moreover, time-domain signal processing dominates the field, while frequency and time-frequency domain methods remain rare despite their potential. Finally, this review highlights key challenges such as scalability, interpretability, robustness, and practicality of current models. Further research should focus on developing adaptive and interpretable anomaly detection frameworks that are efficient enough for real-world SHM deployment. These models should combine multi-modal strategies, handle uncertainty, and follow standardized evaluation protocols across varied monitoring environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring Through Advanced Artificial Intelligence)
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