Advancing condition assessment practice for civil engineering infrastructure systems with photogrammetry-based techniques

There is a great demand to provide innovative techniques to assess the condition and monitoring structural behavior of civil engineering infrastructure systems.   Common methods generally require hands-on instrumentation, heavy labor and can be costly in time as well as resources.  Optical advancing remote sensing, specifically digital imaging, technologies enable quick data collection of the structural material or component of interest and evaluate damages or changes over time.  Digital imaging processing using photogrammetry principles have been shown to be a comparable hands-off evaluation tools for determining alterations and quantifying changes on structure to present current condition states and performances.  This presentation will highlight the incorporation of photogrammetric-based techniques for assessing performance of infrastructure components and systems.  Results from laboratory testing and field demonstrations validate great accuracy as low as 1% error (<1 pixel difference) of the techniques for characterizing changes and performance of materials when compared with both traditional and numerical modeling techniques.  Applications of broadening these photogrammetric-based approaches for a larger range of systems or structures as well as in combination with other techniques are also discussed.  This research presents novelty in innovative technologies as a part of the structural health monitoring practice for civil engineering and transportation infrastructure systems.