ESR12 Quantification of the value of monitoring information for deteriorated structures

While I am preparing my PhD defense, I had the time and made an animation video. Hope you enjoy watching :)  

In this post I would like to share some examples on how to present scientific work in a more interesting way based on my experience. Since my project is about quantification of the value of structural health monitoring before its implementation, the goal is to help decision maker to save money and make better decision. So that I came up with idea of making an advertisement: Let your investment be worthy. I made this  presentation  to the people from industry during the 3rd Implementation day  in COWI and everyone was amused when they saw this slide. I got very positive feedback afterwards.   During the process of investigating my research project, I gradually found that I was performing a role like a consultant to solve questions from the client who has problem making decisions.  I came up with the idea : why not presenting this interaction like chatting on WhatsApp or Messenger?  So that I made this   Messenger poster  to ...

Since my PhD project is approaching the end soon, a lot of questions raises in my mind: what am I going to do next after a PhD? Should I stay in academia and do a post-doctor, or should I go into the industry? Can I go back to academia again if I choose to work in industry? What will the career path look like in- and outside academia? How to get all the job information?    How to improve job application skills? etc. Recently, I received an invitation from BAM to attend a workshop only for female participants - Application training for researchers: Extend your career options in- and outside academia.    Without any hesitation, I joined this workshop, and I have to say it was really a great experience with so much practical and useful information. The workshop was held by  WiN S Adlershof program in Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. WiNS stands for Women in Natural Sciences Adlershof. I was surprised to discover how well they are doing to promote the gend...

Thanks to my PhD project- INFRASTAR so that I could have the chance to spend four months in COWI  Lyngby, Denmark, for my secondment from Octorber 2018 to January 2019. COWI A/S, as an international consulting group, specialising in engineering, environmental science and economics, it attracts me a lot what's it like working here? I have been working in China, Norway and Germany, it also fascinates me to explore another different working culture in Denmark. After I finished my four-month stay, now I am very excited to share my fresh experience. The aim of this secondment is to perform case studies in the environment of the consulting company COWI under supervision of  my industry supervisor Dr. Isaac Farreras Alcover. Isaac has derived a data-based models for assessment and life prediction of monitored civil infrastructure assets on the great belt bridge during his PhD, I continued his work to quantify the conditional value of several options for monitoring camp...

On August 14,2018, the Morandi bridge in Genoa Italy collapsed, which caused 43 people to die and great losses. Here  I am not going to talk about why it  collapsed . But I want to say what we can do to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening. Any structures are like us, if we are sick, we go to doctors. But if structures are sick, how could we know? Yes, through structural health monitoring-SHM! SHM is process of implementing damage detection strategy, which is like a doctor giving us indication of the structure health status. However, the SHM is not like our health insurance which can be free. Some structure owners may be hesitated on investing large money before they see the VALUE. Although it is proved that SHM is beneficial, the existing literature doesn’t tell them: when to do the monitoring? How often to do that? Which SHM techniques to choose? After monitoring, what action to take? There are so many decisions needed to be made, that’s why here come...

This July, I attended my first international conference during my PhD in Manchester, UK, which is The European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring Series (EWSHM) 2018. Here I presented my paper : Long L., Thöns S., Döhler M. The effects of SHM system parameters on the value of damage detection information EWSHM 2018 , The 9th European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring Series, Manchester, UK, 10-13 July 2018 Before the conference, I also attended a 3-day EWSHM workshop "Structural Health Mornitoring Using Statistical Pattern Recognition "by Los Alamos Dynamics,LLC in University of Manchester. Thanks Mr. Charles R. Farrar, Michael Todd and Eric Flynn for opening the door of  Structural health monitoring to me.  My presentation was on the second day of the conference under the special session of :Case studies and theoretical developments in quantifying the value of SHM. On the third day, a tour of Manchester United football stadium and museum at Old Tra...