Benford’s Law Based Bridge Health Monitoring Data Audit Method

Abstract:

The reliability of structural inspection and monitoring data is the key basis for understanding the operation state of the structure and providing maintenance decisions. The structural data are usually acquired by manual inspection or sensors， whose quality is difficult to be verified. As a result， there is a lack of an effective approach for data audit， the accuracy and credibility of manual monitoring data cannot be effectively tested， which may affect infrastructure management and structure operation. Therefore， a bridge health monitoring data audit method is proposed based on Benford’s law， and two typical experiments of crack length data and accelerator data are employed and analyzed. The results indicate that Benford’s law has a good adaptability in structural data audit and it can effectively identify the data characteristics， reflecting the abnormal data.

Key words:health monitoring;data audit;Benford’s law;civil engineering