2026
Journal article
Sensor informativeness, identifiability and uncertainty in Bayesian inverse problems for structural health monitoring
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 257, 114606
Dr.-Ing. habil. · Dresden, Germany
Tammam Bakeer
Computational structural mechanics · uncertainty and information · digital assessment of structures
Decisions about real structures have to be made before the evidence is complete. My work asks when what we already know is enough.
I develop computational, reliability-based and data-informed methods for the analysis and assessment of complex structural systems, and for decision-making under uncertainty. The work runs across structural mechanics, reliability theory, numerical modelling and complexity science — and deliberately on both sides of the line between science and engineering practice.
01
A short introduction
What holds my attention is complexity — the way a bridge or a vault behaves as a system rather than as a sum of its members, and how stubbornly that behaviour resists being reduced to a single number. Most of my work is an attempt to keep that complexity in view and still arrive at an answer someone can act on.
So I work at an intersection: structural engineering, computational mechanics, reliability theory, numerical modelling, physics and complexity science. An idea from any one of them only interests me once it has survived contact with a real structure. The methods I build are meant to end up in an assessment, an engineering office or a design code — not only in a journal.
Over twenty years that has meant nonlinear analysis, finite element modelling, reliability-based assessment and a long involvement in European standardization. More recently it has meant something narrower and, I think, more interesting: the information that measurements actually carry, and what it is sufficient to decide.
Away from the desk the same curiosity goes elsewhere — physics and mathematics for their own sake, the history of science and the people who made it, and portrait drawing, which turns out to be another way of studying how something holds together.
02
The question I keep returning to
Monitoring and testing now produce more data about existing structures than engineers know what to do with. Bayesian methods can estimate stiffness, damage or remaining capacity from it — but a structural decision almost never requires those quantities to be known precisely. It requires one thing: accept the structure as it is, or intervene.
Those are different questions, and the second is often settled long before the first. A prediction can be wildly uncertain and the decision still obvious, because every future the data still allow points the same way. And a very precise prediction can leave the decision wide open, if the little that stays uncertain is exactly what the limit depends on.
Knowing which case you are in — and how long it lasts — is the more useful problem, and the one I am working on now.
03
What I work on
01
Nonlinear computational structural mechanics
Finite element and finite–discrete element formulations, constitutive and interface models, stability, damage and collapse. The numerical machinery needed to follow a structure past its peak load — and the computing to do it at the scale of a real one.
02
Structural reliability and safety concepts
Reliability of nonlinear systems, where the failure domain is curved and several modes compete. The general partial safety factor theory that extends the classical format to them, together with quality control, conformity assessment and code calibration.
03
Information, identifiability and inverse problems
What observations actually reveal about a structure: Bayesian inversion, sensor informativeness, spatially distributed parameter fields — and decision identifiability, the question of when the available evidence already settles the decision that has to be made.
04
Monitoring, digital twins and predictive assessment
Coupling measurement with continuously calibrated models, so that the condition of a bridge or a building becomes a living quantity: data assimilation, service-life prediction, and the case for extending service life on evidence rather than on assumption.
05
Scientific machine learning and complexity
Mechanics-informed operator learning and structure-preserving surrogates — fast, mesh-independent solvers that stay physically admissible — and measures of complexity for systems too large to reason about one member at a time.
06
Engineering practice and standardization
Where the methods are tested. Assessment of existing and infrastructure structures, earthquake resilience and retrofitting, and the translation of research into European and German design rules — the part that decides whether a method is real.
04
Recent
Aug 2026
Conference paper — Information-guided Bayesian modelling for structural health monitoring, with Max Herbers and Steffen Marx, presented at SMAR 2026 in Dresden, in the session on intelligent digital methods for extending the service life of structures beyond 100 years.
2026
Journal article — Sensor informativeness, identifiability and uncertainty in Bayesian inverse problems for structural health monitoring, in Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing. DOI
2026
New preprint — Local information operators for spatial identifiability in distributed-parameter inverse problems in computational mechanics. arXiv
2025
Invited lecture at the JCSS workshop Global Reliability of Structures & Code Calibration, Tongji University, Shanghai — on complexity, modelling and the global reliability of structural systems.
2024
Contributing author of Reliability background of the Eurocodes, published by the Publications Office of the European Union. Read it
05
Selected publications
2026
Preprint
Local information operators for spatial identifiability in distributed-parameter inverse problems in computational mechanics
Preprint, arXiv:2605.28601
2023
Journal article
General partial safety factor theory for the assessment of the reliability of nonlinear structural systems
Reliability Engineering & System Safety 234, 109150
2024
Book / chapter
Reliability background of the Eurocodes: support to the implementation, harmonisation and further development of the Eurocodes
Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg
06
Where this is going
I am developing an independent research programme on information sufficiency for structural decisions — what measurements have to establish before a structure can be accepted, and when the evidence in hand already settles it. The theory, the algorithms and the first publications exist. What it needs now is an institutional home, and a funding proposal is prepared around it.
That can take several forms: a professorship in structural mechanics, numerical methods or structural reliability; a hosted research project or a visiting appointment; or a research-lead role in industry, where the same questions are asked about real assets.
If any of that sits close to what your group or your company does, I would be glad to talk.