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Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) is a well-established technique for remote acquisition of geometrical data of a tested object. For the past two decades it has been commonly used in geodesy, surveying and related areas for acquiring data about spacing of civil engineering structures and buildings. An average TLS apparatus, apart from 3D coordinates registers radiometric information of laser beam reflectance. This radiometric information of the laser beam reflectance is usually called intensity and has no meaning for solely geometric measurements. Nevertheless, the value of intensity depends mainly on physicochemical properties of scanned material such as roughness, colour and saturation. Keeping these facts in mind, authors suggest using changes in value of intensity to locate various imperfections on a brick wall. So far, authors have conducted a thorough and successful research programme dedicated to detection of saturation and saturation movement in brick walls. Based on this experience a new research programme was conducted focused on various aspects of detection of brick wall defects. The main aim of the paper is to present the possibility of using the intensity value in for the diagnostics of the technical condition of a brick walls. Advantages and limitations of harnessing TLS for detection of surface defects of brick walls are presented and discussed in the paper., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The aim of the paper is to introduce a tool for the accurate assessment of the technical condition of buildings. The proposed methodology is becoming an efficient strategy for the massive inspection of building stocks, in big residential areas. The authors have developed an utility based on high-performance images captured by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The flights of the UAVs have been technically protocolized in order to get the proper high-quality information about the real condition of the building. After collecting the images a 3D model is generated and orthophotos of building facades are created. The graphical information is connected with tables of attributes which allow the interactive georeferenced management and assessment. Main requirements and advantages of this visualization technique will be presented by analyzing a particular case study. The selected example will allow the illustration of the methodology. Ongoing developments and technical details about the information system and the analysis platform connected with the visualization tool will be also reported., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more and more popular for use in a various sectors of the economy. The paper presents the results of experiments using a UAV, equipped with a high resolution digital camera, for a visual assessment of technical condition of a building with connection to a big project implemented in Barcelona that required visual data about buildings and their changes with time. Authors try to find out possibilities for the usefulness of digital images obtained from the UAV deck in concrete examples and figure out if they may be complementary to traditional ways used so far in a project called Building Research Analysis and Information Network, which is a platform for analysis to allow strategic decision-making for the maintenance and the sustainability of building stock., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Serrat and Gibert (2011) introduced the use of survival analysis techniques for the study of time-to-failure in the façades of a building stock. Recently, those techniques have been implemented in a predictive system that incorporates the inspection methodology together with the statistical methodology (Gibert et al., 2014; Serrat et al., 2017). The system proposes a network of urban laboratories for building research analysis and information with the aim of modeling the degradation time based on the information from all the cities participating in the project, from a multiscale perspective. The approach is population based, that is from the manager of the building stock point of view, in order to obtain information on the evolution of the stock across time, and to help the manager in the decision making process on global maintenance strategies. For the decision making it is crutial to determine those covariates -like materials, morfology and characteristics of the façade, orientation or environmental conditions- that play a significant role in the progression of different failures in the service life of the façade. The proposed platform also incorporates an open source GIS plugin that includes survival and test moduli that allow the investigator to model the time until a lesion taking into account the variables collected during the inspection process. The aim of this paper is double: a) to shortly introduce the predictive system, as well as the inspection and the analysis methodologies and b) to introduce and illustrate the modeling strategy for the deteriorating process of an urban front. The illustration will be focused on the city of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain) in which more than 14.000 facades have been inspected and analyzed., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)