Analogous to an experiment, a structural health monitoring (SHM) system may be thought of as an information-gathering mechanism. Gathering the information that is representative of the structural state and correctly inferring its meaning helps engineers (decision-makers) mitigate possible losses by taking appropriate actions (risk-informed decision-making). However, the design, research, development, installation, maintenance, and operation of an SHM system are an expensive endeavor. Therefore, the decision to invest in new information is rationally justified if the reduction in the expected losses by utilizing newly acquired information is more than the intrinsic cost of the information acquiring mechanism incurred over the lifespan of the structure. This article investigates the economic advantage of installing an SHM system for inference of the structural state, risk, and lifecycle management by using the value of information (VoI) analysis. Among many possible choices of SHM system designs (different information-gathering mechanisms), pre-posterior decision analysis can be used to select the most feasible design. Traditionally, the cost–benefit analysis of an SHM system is carried out through pre-posterior decision analysis that helps one evaluate the benefit of an experiment or an information-gathering mechanism using the expected value of information metric. This study proposes an alternate normalized metric that evaluates the expected reward ratio (benefit/gain of using an SHM system) relative to the investment risk (cost of SHM over the lifecycle). The analysis of evaluating the relative benefit of various SHM system designs is carried out by considering the concept of the VoI, by performing pre-posterior analysis, and the idea of a perfect experiment is discussed.

类似于实验，结构健康监测 (SHM) 系统可以被认为是一种信息收集机制。收集代表结构状态的信息并正确推断其含义有助于工程师（决策者）通过采取适当的行动（风险知情决策）来减轻可能的损失。然而，SHM 系统的设计、研究、开发、安装、维护和操作是一项昂贵的工作。因此，如果通过利用新获取的信息减少的预期损失超过结构生命周期内发生的信息获取机制的内在成本，那么投资新信息的决定是合理的。本文通过使用信息价值 (VoI) 分析来研究安装 SHM 系统以推断结构状态、风险和生命周期管理的经济优势。在 SHM 系统设计的许多可能选择（不同的信息收集机制）中，可以使用事前决策分析来选择最可行的设计。传统上，SHM 系统的成本收益分析是通过事前决策分析进行的，该分析有助于使用信息度量的期望值来评估实验或信息收集机制的收益。本研究提出了一种替代的标准化指标，用于评估相对于投资风险（生命周期内 SHM 成本）的预期回报比（使用 SHM 系统的收益/收益）。