International Research Projects on Structural Damage Detection

Significant research efforts are presently spent to the problems of health monitoring and damage detection. This paper approaches the subject from the point of view of the organisation of the research. More specifically, it reviews what the main international research programs and activities are, which are devoted to this topic. Related to this are the questions of the user needs and the deployment of the research results: assuming valid research results are obtained, in what form should these results be deployed to address the user needs. While the focus is on EU-cooperative research, also the main US and Far-East activities are briefly discussed.