An Interpretable Deep Learning Method for Identifying Extreme Events under Faulty Data Interference

Structural health monitoring systems continuously monitor the operational state of structures, generating a large amount of monitoring data during the process. The structural responses of extreme events, such as earthquakes, ship collisions, or typhoons, could be captured and further analyzed. However, it is challenging to identify these extreme events due to the interference of faulty data. Real-world monitoring systems suffer from frequent misidentification and false alarms. Unfortunately, it is difficult to improve the system’s built-in algorithms, especially the deep neural networks, partly because the current neural networks only output results and do not provide an interpretable decision-making basis. In this study, a deep learning-based method with visual interpretability is proposed to identify seismic data under sensor faults interference. The transfer learning technique is employed to learn the features of seismic data and faulty data with efficiency. A post hoc interpretation algorithm, termed Gradient-weighted Class Activation Mapping (Grad-CAM), is embedded into the neural networks to uncover the interest regions that support the output decision. The in situ seismic responses of a cable-stayed long-span bridge are used for method verification. The results show that the proposed method can effectively identify seismic data mixed with various types of faulty data while providing good interpretability.