Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a non-destructive evaluation tool that assesses the functionality of structural systems that are used in the civil, mechanical and aerospace engineering practices. A much desirable objective of a SHM system is to provide a continuous monitoring service at a minimal cost with ability to identify problems even in inaccessible structural components. In this dissertation, several such approaches that utilize the measured dynamic response of structural systems are presented to detect, locate, and quantify the damages that are likely to occur in structures. In this study, the structural damage is identified as a reduction in the stiffness characteristics of the structural elements. The primary focus of this study is on the utilization of measured dynamic strains for damage identification in the framed structures which are composed of interconnected beam elements. Although linear accelerations, being more convenient to measure, are commonly used in most SHM practices, herein the strains being more sensitive to elemental damage are considered. Two different approaches are investigated and proposed to identify the structural element stiffness properties. Both approaches are mode-based, requiring first the identification of system modes from the measured strain responses followed by the identification of the element stiffness coefficients. The first approach utilizes the Eigen equation of the finite element model of the structure, while the second approach utilizes the changes caused by the damage in the structural curvature flexibilities. To reduce size of the system which is primarily determined by the number of sensors deployed for the dynamic data collection, measurement sensitivity-based sensor selection criterion is observed to be effective and thus used. The mean square values of the measurements with respect to the stiffness coefficients of the structural elements are used as the effective measures of the measurement sensitivities at different sensor locations. Numerical simulations are used to evaluate the proposed identification approaches as well as to validate the sensitivity-based optimal sensor deployment approach. / Ph. D. / All modern societies depend heavily on civil infrastructure systems such as transportation systems, power generation and transmission systems, and data communication systems for their day-to-day activities and survival. It has become extremely important that these systems are constantly watched and maintained to ensure their functionality. All these infrastructure systems utilize structural systems of different forms such as buildings, bridges, airplanes, data communication towers, etc. that carry the service and environmental loads that are imposed on them. These structural systems deteriorate over time because of natural material degradation. They can also get damaged due to excessive load demands and unknown construction deficiencies. It is necessary that condition of these structural systems is known at all times to maintain their functionality and to avoid sudden breakdowns and associated ensuing problems. This condition assessment of structural systems, now commonly known as structural health monitoring, is commonly done by visual onsite inspections manually performed at pre-decided time intervals such as on monthly and yearly basis. The length of this inspection time interval usually depends on the relative importance of the structure towards the functionality of the larger infrastructure system. This manual inspection can be highly time and resource consuming, and often ineffective in catching structural defects that are inaccessible and those that occur in between the scheduled inspection times and dates. However, the development of new sensors, new instrumentation techniques, and large data transfer and processing methods now make it possible to do this structural health monitoring on a continuous basis. The primary objective of this study is to utilize the measured dynamic or time varying strains on structural components such as beams, columns and other structural members to detect the location and level of a damage in one or more structural elements before they become serious. This detection can be done on a continuous basis by analyzing the available strain response data. This approach is expected to be especially helpful in alerting the owner of a structure by identifying the iv occurrence of a damage, if any, immediately after an unanticipated occurrence of a natural event such as a strong earthquake or a damaging wind storm.