INTELLIGENT LOGGING STRATEGIES FOR CIVIL ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS

In many engineering disciplines, it is the practice to monitor perform ance of prototypes to validate design assumptions and to check complia nce with a specification. Despite the obvious importance of such monit oring, it is relatively rarely undertaken in civil engineering constru ctions. While this may be due partly to the uniqueness of much civil e ngineering construction it is also due to the technical difficulties i nherent in trying to monitor events which occur infrequently and unpre dictably. The purpose of this paper is to describe how computer-based techniques can be used to facilitate data gathering from, and analysis and interpretation of, performance of civil engineering constructions in service.