Citation

Mehta S, Peach J, Weinert A. Infrastructures (Basel) 2022; 7(3): e39.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, International Society for Maintenance And Rehabilitation of Transport Infrastructures, Publisher MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute)

DOI

10.3390/infrastructures7030039

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Aerial surveys using LiDAR systems can play a vital role in the quantitative assessment of infrastructure damage caused by hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters. GmAPD LiDAR provides high-resolution 3D point-cloud data which enables the surveyor to take accurate measurements of damages to roads, buildings, communication towers, power lines, etc. Due to the high point cloud density, a very large volume of data is generated during an aerial survey. The data collected during the airborne imaging is post-processed with calibration, geo-registration, and segmentation. Albeit very accurate, extracting useful information from this data is a slow and laborious process. For disaster response, methods of automating this process have spurred the development of simple, fast algorithms that can be used to recognize physical structures from the point-cloud data that can later be assessed for structural damage. In this paper, we describe an efficient algorithm to extract roadways from a massive Lidar data-set to assist the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in assessing road conditions as a step toward helping surveyors expedite a quantitative assessment of road damages for providing and distributing public assistance for disaster relief.

Language: en

Keywords

airborne imagery; disaster response; lidar; point cloud; road detection; road marking