Structural health monitoring based maintenance (SHMBM) is a basic engineering effort to collect maintenance information, forming a database system to open to the public or citizens for making decision on a suitable solution strategy to extend a structure's life. Sustainability of the infrastructure structural performance can be assessed by performing continuous structural health monitoring system (SHMS) on the structural deformational properties. The essence of SHMS can be considered to involve measurement, inspection, and assessment of in-service structures on a continuous basis with minimum labor requirement. However, human memory limitation, job changes, imperfections and inability to provide a reliable monitoring system can lead to overly optimistic reports on structural health. Therefore, a sustainable SHMS which fulfill ‘AtoE’ characteristics, i.e. accuracy, benefit, comprehensiveness, durability and ease of operation, is necessary to be consider in designing a reliable long-term SHMS. Generally, those characteristics are difficult to compare quantitatively. Specifically, some qualitatively compared sensory technologies will be reviewed in this paper by comparing the application of load cell, stress meter, strain gauge and EM (elastomagnetic) sensory technology. Furthermore, some innovative sensory technologies such as GPS-based MMS (movement monitoring systems), PDMD (peak displacement memory devices) and FOS (fiber optic sensors), are introduced to monitor global structural movement, partial structural movement and local structural deformational properties at different scales of monitored objects. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.