The paper describes the concept, design, and implementation of a monitoring system that is rooted in recent advances in the area of integrated system health management (ISHM). The motivation for a monitoring system was to enable a safe and effective return to normal operations after damaging events such as Hurricane Katrina, as well as to improve readiness in preparation for such events. The system's uniqueness is derived from its architecture that embodies management of data, information, and knowledge (DIaK) distributed across elements of the system. The architecture also defines systems as networked intelligent elements with distributed processing capability, and enables systematic augmentation of monitoring capability as well a scalability to monitor additional systems. Furthermore, the monitoring system allows near real-time analysis; and includes databases that can be accessed for detailed visualization and analysis, as needed.