In this research, 200 corrosion images of steel and 500 crack images of rubber bearing are collected and manually labeled to build the data set. Then the two data sets are respectively adopted to train VGG-Unet models in two methods, aiming to conduct Damage Segmentation by inputting different size of data set. One method is Squashing Segmentation to input squashed images from high resolution directly into VGG-Unet model while Cropping Segmentation uses cropped image with size 224 × 224 as input images. Because the proportion of damage pixels in the data set is different, the results produced by the two data sets are quite different. For large size damage (such as corrosion) segmentation, Cropping Segmentation has a better result while for minor damage (such as crack) segmentation, the result is opposite. The main reason is the gap in the concentration of valid data from the data set. To improve the capability of crack segmentation based on Cropping Segmentation, Background Data Drop Rate (BDDR) is adopted to reduce the quantity of background images to control the proportion of damage pixels from the data set in pixel-level. The ratio of damage pixels from the data set can be decided by different value of BDDR. By testing, the accuracy of Cropping Segmentation becomes relatively higher under BDDR being 0.8.

A critical problem encountered in structural health monitoring of civil engineering structures, and other structures such as mechanical or aircraft structures, is how to convincingly analyze the nonstationary data that is coming online, how to reduce the high-dimensional features, and how to extract informative features associated with damage to infer structural conditions. Wavelet transform among other techniques has proven to be an effective technique for processing and analyzing nonstationary data due to its unique characteristics. However, the biggest challenge frequently encountered in assuring the effectiveness of wavelet transform in analyzing massive nonstationary data from civil engineering structures, and in structural health diagnosis, is how to select the right wavelet. The question of which wavelet function is appropriate for processing and analyzing the nonstationary data in civil engineering structures has not been clearly addressed, and no clear guidelines or rules have been reported in the literature to show how the right wavelet is chosen. Therefore, this study aims to address an important question in this regard by proposing a new framework for choosing a proper wavelet that can be customized for massive nonstationary data analysis, disturbances separation, and extraction of informative features associated with damage. The proposed method takes into account data type, data and wavelet characteristics, similarity, sharing information, and data recovery accuracy. The novelty of this study lies in integrating multi-criteria which are associated directly with features that correlated well with change in structures due to damage, including common criteria such as energy, entropy, linear correlation index, and variance. Also, it introduces and considers new proposed measures, such as wavelet-based nonlinear correlation such as cosh spectral distance and mutual information, wavelet-based energy fluctuation, measures-based recovery accuracy, such as sensitive feature extraction, noise reduction, and others to evaluate various base wavelets’ function capabilities for appropriate decomposition and reconstruction of structural dynamic responses. The proposed method is verified by experimental and simulated data. The results revealed that the proposed method has a satisfactory performance for base wavelet selection and the small order of Daubechies and Symlet provide the best results, especially order 3. The idea behind our proposed framework can be applied to other structural applications.

The primary goal of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is to assess performance and determine the physical state of the structures. Technological improvements and the ubiquitous accessibility of Wi-Fi networks have enhanced real-time SHM based on the Internet of Things (IoT). Extensive structural health evaluation can be conducted using real-time test data collected from various IoT sensors on civil infrastructures. These sensors monitor multiple structural health parameters, and the data is accessible via cloud-based storage platforms. This paper presents an overview of IoT technologies and provides an extensive literature review of IoT applications for civil infrastructures, highlighting associated challenges.

A machine learning-based fast seismic risk assessment framework is proposed to ease the computational burden in estimating the potential earthquake-induced loss of a building during its intended life. Both the hazard parameters of sites and structural parameters of buildings were incorporated as inputs. The continuous risk values and discrete risk levels were used as outputs for the regression and classification tasks of supervised learning, respectively. A proof-of-concept study of steel frames proved the feasibility of the proposed approach. Artificial neural networks achieved the lowest root mean square error of 0.0051 for regression and the highest accuracy of 96.8% for classification.

In recent years, aging of bridges has become a growing concern, and the danger of bridge collapse is increasing. To appropriately maintain bridges, it is necessary to perform inspections to accurately understand their current state. Until now, bridge inspections have involved a visual inspection in which inspection personnel come close to the bridges to perform inspection and hammering tests to investigate abnormal noises by hammering the bridges with an inspection hammer. Meanwhile, as there are a large number of bridges (for example, 730,000 bridges in Japan), and many of these are constructed at elevated spots; the issue is that the visual inspections are laborious and require huge cost. Another issue is the wide disparity in the quality of visual inspections due to the experience, knowledge, and competence of inspectors. Accordingly, the authors are trying to resolve or ameliorate these issues using unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology, artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and telecommunications technology. This is discussed first in this paper. Next, the authors discuss the future prospects of bridge inspection using robot technology such as a 3-D model of bridges. The goal of this paper is to show the areas in which deployment of the UAV, robots, telecommunications, and AI is beneficial and the requirements of these technologies.