ABSTRACT
All these aspects are connected to the integrity of the structural systems, considered as the completeness and consistency of the structural configuration.
However, the integrity and consequently the overall dependability can be lowered by deterioration (considered as a continuous in time phenomenon) and damage (related to specific events during the service life). Structural integrity monitoring represents an essential tool to assess the evolution in time of the dependability of existing structural systems. It includes issues like structural performances, from regular exercise to out-of-service and collapse, environmental conditions, sensor systems and their optimal placement, data transmission systems, signal processing techniques, state identification methods and model updating.
