In civil engineering structures, modal changes produced by environmental conditions, especially temperature, can be equivalent to or greater than the ones produced by damage. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish the variations in structural properties caused by environmental changes from those caused by structural damages. In this paper, we present a review of the technical literature concerning variations in the vibration properties of civil structures under varying temperature conditions and damage identification methods for bridge structures. First, the literature on the effect of temperature on vibration properties is roughly divided into experimental and theoretical studies. According to the classification of theoretical research methods, the progress in research on the probability analysis method, the artificial intelligence method, and the optimization algorithm method in this field is reviewed. Based on the different methods of experimental research employed in this field, the experimental research is reviewed according to qualitative and quantitative analyses. Then, damage identification methods for bridge structures are reviewed, considering data-based and model-based methods. Finally, different research methods are summarized.