Building inventory for seismic risk assessment using unmanned aerial vehicle

Abstract

The concept of applying Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with proper cameras in acquiring imagery data had been implied for many research and industry purposes in the recent years. This paper shows that the concept of using UAV and camera as a method of data collection of building inventory for seismic risk assessment. It is a part of the method of Rapid Visual Screening (RVS) survey in order to obtain the building inventory that includes the dimensions of building. The UAV used for this project is a high technology hexacopter that flies autonomously in order to obtain a constant data. The camera in the other hand is a high resolution digital compact camera with a Global Positioning System (GPS) built-in the camera for a more precise and accurate data collection of aerial images. The images then will be properly altered which the data acquisition will be used for analysis in a computer software. The case study for this research are buildings in the area of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Johor. The flexibility, safety, eases of operation, and relatively low-cost of ownership and operation make possible of UAVs and digital compact camera to be implemented in data collection of building inventory for seismic risk assessment.