Value of information analysis with structural reliability methods

When designing monitoring systems and planning inspections, engineers must assess the benefits of the additional information that can be obtained and weigh them against the cost of these measures. The value of information (VoI) concept of the Bayesian statistical decision analysis provides a formal framework to quantify these benefits. This paper presents the determination of the VoI when information is collected to increase the reliability of engineering systems. It is demonstrated how structural reliability methods can be used to effectively model the VoI and an efficient algorithm for its computation is proposed. The theory and the algorithm are demonstrated by an illustrative application to monitoring of a structural system subjected to fatigue deterioration.