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Explainable fault diagnosis for smart cities

Subject Area Structural Engineering, Building Informatics and Construction Operation
Term from 2020 to 2025
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 443128409
 
Final Report Year 2025

Final Report Abstract

This project has developed a decentralized, explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) framework for identifying sensor faults in “smart” civil infrastructure, encompassing civil engineering structures equipped with wireless structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. Unlike conventional SHM systems that rely on centralized data processing with limited transparency, automated fault diagnosis in this project has been formulated as a stand-alone classification problem, enabling the identification of both single and combined sensor faults using machine learning at a wireless sensor node level, rendering the SHM systems scalable, flexible, and transparent. To perform classification, long short-term memory (LSTM) networks have been trained using time-series sensor data, including both non-faulty signals and signals with artificially injected faults. The LSTM networks have been optimized to run on low-power wireless sensor nodes. To enhance transparency, explainability has been integrated into the models using Shapley additive explanations (model-agnostic) and gradient × input (model-specific). The explainable LSTM networks have been embedded into wireless sensor nodes using Internet-of-Things principles, enabling local fault identification and explanation. For user interaction and visualization of fault types and relevance scores, a dashboard based on the lightweight Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol has been developed. The decentralized XAI framework has achieved significant reductions in bandwidth usage and has proven suitable for application in resource-constrained environments. Validation experiments have been carried out using both artificial and real-world data, including a SHM system installed on a pedestrian bridge. The results have shown high classification accuracy (>90 %) and consistent, interpretable predictions from the LSTM networks. In summary, the proposed framework has provided a reliable and transparent solution for smart infrastructure monitoring, offering a promising foundation for future smart city applications.

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