Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an anomaly detection process. Data-driven SHM has gained much attention compared to the model-based strategy, specifically with the current state-of-the-art machine learning routines. Model-based methods require structural information, time-consuming model updating, and may fail with noisy data, a persistent condition in real-time SHM problems. However, there are several hindrances in supervised and unsupervised settings in machine learning-based SHM. This study identifies and addresses such hindrances with the versatility of state-of-the-art deep learning strategies. While managing those complications, we aim at proposing a general, structure-independent (ie requires no prior information) SHM framework. Developing such techniques plays a crucial role in the SHM of smart cities. In the supervised SHM and sensor output validation (SOV) category, data class imbalance results from the lack of data from nuanced structural states. Employing Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) units, we developed a general technique that manages both SHM and SOV. The developed architecture accepts high-dimensional features, enabling the train of Generative Adversarial Networks for data generation, addressing the complications of data imbalance. GAN-generated SHM data improved accuracy for low-sampled classes from 44.77% to 64.58% and from 73.39% to 90.84% in two SOV and SHM case studies, respectively. Arguing the unsupervised SHM as a practical category since it identifies novelties (ie unseen states), the current application of dimensionality reduction (DR) in unsupervised SHM is investigated. Due to the curse of dimensionality, classical unsupervised techniques cannot function with high-dimensional features, driving the use of DR techniques. Investigations highlighted the importance of avoiding DR in unsupervised SHM, as data dimensions that DR suppresses may contain damage-sensitive features for novelties. With DR, novelty detection accuracy declined up to 60% in two benchmark SHM datasets. Other obstacles in the unsupervised SHM area are case-dependent features, lack of dynamic-class novelty detection, and the impact of user-defined detection parameters on novelty detection accuracy. We chose the fast Fourier transform-based (FFT) of raw signals with no dimensionality reduction to develop the SHM framework. A deep neural network scheme is developed to perform the pattern recognition of that high-dimensional data. The framework does not require prior information, with GAN models implemented, offering robustness to sensor placement in structures. These characteristics make the framework suitable for developing general unsupervised SHM techniques. / Doctor of Philosophy / Detecting abnormal behaviors in structures from the input signals of sensors is called Structural health monitoring (SHM). The vibrational characteristics of signals or direct pattern recognition techniques can be applied to detect anomalies in a data-driven scheme. Machine learning (ML) tools are suitable for data-driven methods; However, challenges exist on both supervised and unsupervised ML-based SHM. Recent improvements in deep learning are employed in this study to address such obstacles after their identification. In supervised learning, the data points for the normal state of structures are abundant, and datasets are usually imbalanced, which is the same issue for the sensor output validation (SOV). SOV must be present before SHM takes place to remove anomalous sensor outputs. First, a unified decision-making system for SHM and SOV problems is proposed, and then data imbalance is alleviated by generating new data objects from low-sampled classes. The proposed unified method is based on the recurrent neural networks, and the generation mechanism is Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). Results indicate improvements in accuracy metrics for data classes in the minority. For the unsupervised SHM, four major issues are identified, including data loss during feature extraction, case-dependency of such extraction schemes. These two issues are solved with the fast Fourier transform (FFT) of signals to be the features with no reduction in their dimensionality. The other obstacles are the lack of discrimination between different novel classes (ie only two classes of damage and undamaged) and the effect of the detection parameters, defined by users, on the SHM analysis. The latter two predicaments are also addressed by online generating new data objects from the incoming signal stream with GAN and tuning the detection system to have the same performance regarding user-defined parameters regarding GAN-generated data. The proposed unsupervised technique is further improved to be insensitive to the sensor placement on structures by employing recurrent neural network layers in the GAN architecture, with the GAN that has overfitted discriminator.