Workshop 3: Probability of detection – from asking whether damage can be detected to optimizing how reliably it can be detected and localized throughout SHM system’s life

Friday, 24 February 2027
In parallel to talks

Reliability assessment metrics such as Probability of Detection (POD) and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves are well established in Non-Destructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT/NDE). However, translating these concepts directly from conventional NDE to Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is not directly applicable. Over the past two decades, significant research has focused on developing POD- and ROC-based approaches that are better suited to SHM applications. Yet, the role of POD is often diminished to performance validation for meeting requirements in standardization.
Although performance validation is of utmost importance, determining the largest damage size that can be missed with a specified probability and confidence level is and always has been more than this!
POD- and ROC-based performance assessment can be used in every step of structural life cycle, from design over testing and deployment until maintenance and decommissioning.

This workshop is centered around the question:
“What does effective POD-based performance assessment look like throughout the entire SHM system’s life cycle?”

For example, POD-based analysis can be used to establish performance criteria for selecting between competing approaches, optimize algorithm parameters, identify operating conditions in which an algorithm becomes unreliable and update performance criteria for system deterioration. Furthermore, the concept of POD can be extended beyond the binary question of whether damage is detected to address how reliably damage can be detected and localized within a specified spatial error.

The workshop will examine these concepts through several SHM applications, including:

• Acoustic Emission (AE): reliability of damage localization
• Guided Waves (GW): reliability of damage detection
• Guided Waves (GW): reliability of damage localization
• AI-based GW methods: reliability of combined damage detection and localization

Ultimately, the workshop asks how POD concept requirements change when POD is not only used as post-development reliability assessment metric but also as design and system life cycle metric for SHM systems.

Contact: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Inka Mueller, Hochschule Bochum and Dr.-Ing. Ahmed Bayoumi, DLR

Participation in the workshop is free of charge. Registration is done as part of the seminar registration process.