Value of information

The analysis of the Value of Information (VoI) is rooted in Bayesian decision and utility theory, having a specific format to quantify the utility increase of related additional and not yet known information. The expected VoI can be found as the difference between the maximum utility obtained in pre-posterior analysis and the maximum utility obtained using only prior information.
The value of information can be assigned as the difference between expected utilities of the optimum decisions with and without that information. For example, the value of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is calculated as the difference between life cycle benefits with and without using SHM strategies.