Discovery

There has been a trend in applying imaging techniques in building facade inspection, such as laser scanning, infrared thermography, high definition camera, etc. Utilizing such techniques creates a large amount of multi-sourced image data for building facade inspections. However, there is a lack of an effective way to manage these massive image data in aspects of spectral, spatial, and temporal data. As GIS is specialized in the storage and analysis of spatial and raster data, it can provide a good working platform for archiving and processing massive image data.

The TreeHaus is a design for a net-positive, regenerative housing development inspired by the way trees collect and distribute resources in the forest. The goal of the project is to create a building that strengthens its surrounding environment and municipality by imagining it as a constituent of its contextual ecology. The TreeHaus will harness energy from the sun, harvest water from the rain, and cycle resources and information throughout its community in the same way that plants and trees do through networks in nature.

Over the past years, a growing trend of utilizing camera-equipped drones for periodical building facade inspection has emerged. Building façade anomalies, such as cracks and erosion, can be detected through analyzing drone-captured video, photographs, and infrared images. Such anomalies are known to have an impact on various building performance aspects, e.g., thermal, energy, moisture control issues. Current research efforts mainly focus on computational image processing methods to recognize certain types of facade anomalies.