Rapid Reconnaissance of Post-Disaster Building Damage Using Augmented Situational Visualization

This paper discusses the feasibility of using augmented situational visualization, commonly referred to as augmented reality (AR), to evaluate damage sustained by buildings in the aftermath of natural and human-perpetrated disasters. A study was carried out to evaluate the hypothesis that previously stored building information can be superimposed onto a real structure in AR, and that structural damage can be evaluated by measuring and interpreting key differences between a baseline image and the real view of the facility. Two experiments were performed in conjunction with structural tests that were being conducted to investigate the seismic performance of concrete walls. The obtained results highlight the potential of using AR for rapid damage detection and indicate that the accuracy of structural displacements measured using AR is a direct function of the accuracy with which augmented images can be registered with the real world.