The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has requested the convening of experts to discuss how structural health monitoring technology and decision analysis concepts can be combined to provide robust, consistent, and defensible information regarding the ability of infrastructure assets to perform their intended functions. This type of information will be instrumental for USACE Operations and Asset Management in their mission to maintain the U.S. waterway assets. The USACE is seeking expert opinions from other domains and industries that have developed and implemented some degree of asset portfolio management using decision analysis and/or structural health monitoring technologies. The experts would be asked to address questions such as:

• What lessons can be learned from other sectors that are further along in developing and implementing strategic portfolio management for large asset inventories?
• What is the basic unit to be evaluated in the USACE portfolio (e.g., watershed, system, project, asset, component, subcomponent)?
• What is the right level of complexity for evaluating portfolio units that takes advantage of the vast engineering expertise and technology (such as structural health monitoring) of USACE for each type of infrastructure but still provides consistency across disparate types of infrastructure?
• How can consistency be implemented when different assets require very different models to evaluate likely performance (e.g., recreation site, bridge, dam)?
• What lessons can be learned from other sectors that have used quantified enterprise value models to inform their fiscal decisions?
• What are the knowledge gaps and further research needs meriting additional exploration by USACE?
• What are viable next steps that can be taken in the R&D arena that will help transition from the current state of USACE asset management tools and capabilities to those ideal for maximizing portfolio performance and value to the nation?

The experts will provide their perspectives as individuals; no National Academies report or recommendations will be issued.