摘要: |
Maintaining safe operating conditions and effectively allocating maintenance resources depends
on accurate and timely assessments of transportation infrastructure condition. Visual inspection
of transportation structures is limited by a lack of optimal means of quantifying assessments and
tracking changes in such assessments over time. Although several branches of inspection are
thorough and robust, most rely on somewhat subjective measures that are in the eye of the
beholder and accordingly can have significant levels of variation across different inspectors
(Moore et. al., 2001). In this work, a more objective method of inspection and assessment is
proposed using technology associated with recently developed methodologies known as
Structure from Motion (SFM). This technology allows assessments to be made from a sequence
of digital photographs from non-specialized, low-cost equipment (Westoby et al., 2012,
Koutsodis et al., 2014). This proposal outlines how such a procedure can be used to develop
methods of inspection and assessment of environmental degradation or traumatic damage that is
more objective and potentially more valuable in prioritizing transportation structures for repair or
maintenance. |