Vibration based structural health monitoring (SHM) has been widely used in civil structures, i.e. buildings, bridges, earthwork structures, etc. The purpose of SHM is to evaluate the condition of the structure and to identify damages. A variety of approaches have been presented in the literature for system identification and damage detection. The theory of vibration-based SHM is that the dynamic characteristics of a structure are a function of its physical properties. When there are changes in these physical properties, such as a decrease in stiffness due to localized structural damage, there will be corresponding changes in the dynamic characteristics of the structure.

Operational Modal Analysis is used to estimate the dynamic characteristics of structures using accelerometer data. The dynamic characteristics of structures, namely natural frequencies, damping ratios and mode shapes are fundamental properties for the SHM. Operational Modal Analysis is aimed at estimating the dynamic characteristic of the building type of structures. OMA is an ambient vibration analysis. This analysis can be used to create mathematical models to be used as a reference in the future comparisons and calibrate finite element models to increase their accuracy.