Over the past few years, considerable attention has been directed towards better methods of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) in order to schedule and perform preventative maintenance of the civil infrastructures such as bridges, high buildings and dams. It has become increasingly important to replace some existing inspection methods by using online SHM sensor systems to provide real-time information to provide data on health of the structure. This work addresses the design, use and evaluation of a suite of sensors for the purpose. These are required to be stable, reliable, durable and cost-effective to be used for long term monitoring. Optical fibre Sensors (OFSs), and Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors in particular, have. been widely applied in SHM due to their advantages such as small size, dielectric nature, immunity to electromagnetic interference and inertness to chemical hazards. Their potential for being interrogated by sophisticated signal processing systems highlights the value of FBG sensors as an ideal candidate technology for monitoring application especially to measure strain and temperature. The main objective of this thesis is to address the gap between the theoretical and practical aspects of the SHM using FBG technology, building on prior work by the group at City University London and on work published in the literature and hence provide data from in-situ measurements. To do so has involved further development of the systems used in previous research - both software and hardware aspects required for field test applications, building on the present technology. This thesis covers the performance evaluation of a FBG-based distributed sensor system which is based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) architecture and the development of a small compact and low cost system for distributed strain measu