Use of monitoring data for a probabilistic analysis of structures

Probabilistic analyses are becoming more and more important in civil engineering. A Probabilistic analysis can be used for the calibration of partial safety factors of the semi probabilistic safety concept of current codes as well as in the context of sustainability evaluations of existing buildings or bridges. The probability of failure, pf or the safety index β of the system, respectively are the main results of the calculation procedure of a probabilistic analysis. If more information from a structure are available, the uncertainty for the loads and the resistance decrease. For a probabilistic analysis the coefficient of variation for the considered basic variables may become smaller. With the new developments for a commercial use of sensors and of monitoring equipment in the last years the measurement of the parameters of a structure can be done very well. The paper shows the procedure of such an calcualtion and demonstrates the advantage of the use of monitoring data in an example.