An Importance Measure to Assess the Value of a Component Inspection Policy

Importance measures have been used extensively to support risk-informed decision making. The purpose of such metrics is to help achieve safe and efficient design, maintenance and operation of assets in industrial sectors. In parallel, Value of Information (VoI), a concept at the junction of the fields of decision theory and Bayesian theory, has been used to define cost-efficient inspection policies, in particular in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). This paper discusses the use of importance measures in a decision context that includes cost, maintenance and inspection, with the objective of defining infrastructure management policies. More specifically, it focuses on the use of VoI for the identification of components or groups of components that may be particularly ‘information-relevant’ in a given decision context.