Owing to the increase in building service life, monitoring technology, including structural health monitoring, is expected to play an increasingly important role in assessing, maintaining, and improving the function of buildings in a timely manner. Conventional structural health monitoring technology, however, has the following limitations. 1) From the viewpoint of business continuity 1(BC1) or continuity of life quality for building occupants, monitoring building function is needed, and the structural performance which entails conventional health monitoring technology, is only a part of it. 2) Conventional health monitoring technology, which focuses on detecting structural damage, and applying the technology to assess building performance during the remaining lifetime, is not straightforward. In this study, a novel framework for performance monitoring and management of buildings, "building health care" framework, is proposed, and opportunities and challenges are discussed by reviewing conventional structural health monitoring technology using an analogy of the human health care framework. Human health care is becoming multidisciplinary in scope, including conventional medical care that can diagnose and cure diseases. Moreover, with the development and dissemination of Internet of Things, various data regarding the human body are accumulated, and a healthcare concept to utilize this data is proposed.
In this study, some examples for monitoring building performance to realize the proposed concept of building health care are also presented.