The benefit of permanent monitoring for seismic emergency management

In this paper, a framework based on Value of Information (VoI) theory from pre-posterior Bayesian decision analysis is applied to the case of post-earthquake emergency management of traffic restrictions for a bridge. The decision context is the following: the operator of a bridge is concerned about the use of the structure in post-earthquake scenarios and wishes to know if it is worth to install a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system which gives information about the state of the bridge. The possible choices about traffic restrictions after the seismic event are Open or Close the bridge. The benefit of SHM is computed based on VoI and the influence of significant variables involved in the decisional framework is investigated.