The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
Download
Publications Copernicus
Download
Citation
Articles | Volume XL-3/W3
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-3-W3-15-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-3-W3-15-2015
19 Aug 2015
 | 19 Aug 2015

SEMI-AUTOMATED DETECTION OF SURFACE DEGRADATION ON BRIDGES BASED ON A LEVEL SET METHOD

A. Masiero, A. Guarnieri, F. Pirotti, and A. Vettore

Keywords: Deterioration detection, Monitoring, Large infrastructures, Level sets, Image segmentation

Abstract. Due to the effect of climate factors, natural phenomena and human usage, buildings and infrastructures are subject of progressive degradation. The deterioration of these structures has to be monitored in order to avoid hazards for human beings and for the natural environment in their neighborhood. Hence, on the one hand, monitoring such infrastructures is of primarily importance. On the other hand, unfortunately, nowadays this monitoring effort is mostly done by expert and skilled personnel, which follow the overall data acquisition, analysis and result reporting process, making the whole monitoring procedure quite expensive for the public (and private, as well) agencies.

This paper proposes the use of a partially user–assisted procedure in order to reduce the monitoring cost and to make the obtained result less subjective as well. The developed method relies on the use of images acquired with standard cameras by even inexperienced personnel. The deterioration on the infrastructure surface is detected by image segmentation based on a level sets method. The results of the semi-automated analysis procedure are remapped on a 3D model of the infrastructure obtained by means of a terrestrial laser scanning acquisition.

The proposed method has been successfully tested on a portion of a road bridge in Perarolo di Cadore (BL), Italy.