Sustainability efforts and global climate targets coincide with degradation of the built environment. Changes in use, increasing loads, and—especially in transport infrastructure— sharply rising traffic flows are encountering an infrastructure that has largely reached or exceeded its service life. During the entire lifecycle of structures and materials, the engineer needs to decide which action(s) are optimal, e.g., most eco-efficient at what time. This decision-making process is based on the reassessment of the structure or network, which depends substantially on the information available about the system. It is well known that available and continuously further developed NDT methods allow the collection of manifold information highly relevant in structural assessment. However, the condition (i.e., the quality) of the information measured on-site and the reliability of inspection systems need to be known before NDT results can be used in such safety-relevant calculations. This contribution attempts to shed light on the application of POD analyses and measurement uncertainty calculations in nondestructive testing of concrete structures to provide useful and quality-assured information for reliability assessments of our built environment—with an emphasis on ground penetrating radar. It is shown that signal processing techniques affect POD analysis results to varying degrees, that measurement uncertainties are useful to validate PODs, and that the utilization of both POD analysis and measurement uncertainty calculations can pave the way to NDT-based reliability assessment, which will be exemplarily demonstrated in conclusion—generally aiming to derive those maintenance strategies and actions that are in line with actual demands.
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