Unmanned aerial vehicle-based as-built surveys of buildings: Fid-Bau Portal

Unmanned aerial vehicle-based as-built surveys of buildings

He, Tianzhi / Chen, Kaiwen / Jazizadeh, Farrokh / Reichard, Georg

Abstract Camera-equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are effective tools for as-built building surveys. Through a systematic literature review, we synthesized and categorized factors affecting the quality of UAV-based reconstructed scenes and their associated performance evaluation metrics (e.g., accuracy and time efficiency). Their interrelationships were analyzed by Social Network Analysis (SNA) to identify critical factors and their impacts. We further quantitatively evaluated these factors and metrics through controlled experiments with a camera-equipped UAV and a Terrestrial Laser Scanner for an institutional building. Various flight paths, photo overlaps, and distances to the building were tested to evaluate their impact on dimensional accuracy, time efficiency, and point cloud density. We demonstrated the trade-offs between the influential factors to provide insights into parameter selection. Additionally, a data requirements schema for UAV-based as-built 3D scene reconstruction was established toward standardization of data processing practices. This study could serve as a foundation for future research and applications of UAV-based photogrammetry for building surveys.

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Highlights • Studied effective parameters on UAV-based photogrammetric as-built documentation. • Used structured literature review to identify influential parameters. • Implemented Social Network Analysis to identify influential parameters' importance. • Found flight path, photo overlap, and UAV-surface distance with the highest impact. • Conducted a case study to quantify the impact of the above-mentioned factors.