Evaluation of structural health monitoring system in reducing the cost of maintenance and repair of buildings in high seismic areas

Today, the structural health monitoring system based on various non-destructive analysis and tests has been greatly expanded in order to better performance and prevent further damage to the structure especially in areas with high seismicity. Given that, various structural health monitoring systems have been introduced. On the other hand, the discussion of maintenance costs with these methods can be helpful in choosing the most optimal method for this purpose. To this end, five new systems for health monitoring of structures, including the method of examining changes in basic information; Finite element model upgrade method, acoustic and ultrasonic method, magnetic field method and thermal field method were selected in 5 categories: management, technical, economic, human source and safety along with 20 sub-criteria in the field of maintenance. Then, through the pairwise comparison questionnaire of analytic hierarchy process method and receiving the opinions of experts in this field, different structural health monitoring systems were evaluated and prioritized to select the optimal system based on the most important criteria of building maintenance. The results showed that the structural health monitoring system by finite element model method has gained the first rank in all 5 main factors of management, technical, economic, human source and safety.