This paper presents a method for building roof contour extraction from digital images taken over complex urban scenes. The proposed method is based on a snakes-based energy function that represents building roof contours in digital images, which is optimized by using the dynamic programming (DP) algorithm. As most of the building roof contours are characterized by rectilinear sides intercepting...

Many strucrural engineers are surprised to learn that the In~rnotional Building Code (IBC, 2009) requires the roof structure to be engineered for standing water weight in the vicinity of the drains and scuppers regardless of roof slope. In addition, some low-slope roofs also require special attenlion for water weight and stiffness for safety against ponding failures or protection against accele...

This paper presents a method for extracting building roof contours from digital images collected over urban landscapes. The proposed method utilizes an energy function based on snakes that represents building roof contours in digital images and is optimized with a dynamic programming (DP) algorithm. Because most building roof contours are characterized by rectilinear sides that intercept at rig...

UAVs equipped with high-resolution thermal cameras provide an excellent investigative tool used for a multitude of building-specific applications, including roof insulation inspection. We have presented in this study a relative thermographic calibration algorithm and a superpixel Markov Random Field model to address problems in thermal infrared inspection of roof insulation using UAVs. The rela...

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) at the Pittsburgh Research Laboratory (PRL) is conducting research to reduce the noise exposures of roof bolting machine operators and to prevent additional cases of Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) thru the development of engineering noise controls. This paper describes and evaluates an engineering noise control for the roof bo...

This paper focuses on a field test that locates roof areas with a high solar potential and predicts the solar “harvest” per m. The test analyzes 2.5D LIDAR data provided by official surveying and mapping sources. The primary LIDAR data is prepared by masking the roofs’ contours and afterwards filtering the point cloud by a threshold value. The remaining LIDAR data, which represents the building...

A three dimensional numerical wind tunnel based on the Navier-Stokes equations for viscous, incompressible fluid and LES method is established. Incoming wind field is generated based on the AIJ guidelines (2004). The numerical wind tunnel is validated against experimental results. A low-rise building with green roof is tested in the numerical wind tunnel. The results show that the green roof re...

Green roofs have the potential to function as islands of biodiversity within urban and suburban environments. However, plant diversity is constrained by the harsh environment of a green roof, especially summertime water deficit and heat stress. We hypothesized that Sedum species, which are highly tolerant of the roof-top environment, would reduce peak soil temperature and increase performance o...

With the developments in automobile technologies; more focus is given to the vehicle weight reduction. About 30% weight is contributed by the automobile body. Now-a-days, plastic composites are used to manufacture automobile bodies as they are strong, light, corrosion resistant and easy to use. This paper represents the selection of plastic composites to build vehicle roof as a replacement of c...