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As civil engineering structures become larger, non-contact inspection technology is required to measure the overall shape and size of structures and evaluate safety. Structures are easily exposed to the external environment and may not be able to perform their original functions depending on the continuous load for a long time. Therefore, in this study, we propose a method for estimating the vertical displacement of structures using light detection and ranging, which enables non-contact measurement. The point cloud acquired through laser scanning was rearranged into a three-dimensional space, and internal nodes were created by continuously dividing the space. The generated node has its own location information, and the vertical displacement value was calculated by searching for the node where the deformation occurred. The performance of the proposed displacement estimation technique was verified through static loading experiments, and the octree space partitioning method is expected to be applied and utilized in structural health monitoring.

As high-rise buildings and aging structures increase, researches are underway to effectively inspect structures and prevent accidents in Korea. The structure cannot maintain its original shape due to natural disasters and loads, and deformation occurs. The accidents caused by the deformation of the structure have become a common news in the surroundings. Therefore, this study proposes a noncontact shape management monitoring method that can check structures and detect deformation.

In recent years, building energy consumption has increased in response to climate change, resulting in a worldwide reduction of energy efficiency. A strong response is required, through both the enhancement of building energy efficiency and the reduction of power usage. These objectives could be achieved by pursuing “Blackout” prevention, through developing a control unit such as that of the urban energy grid system that was used in the Energy Operation Center (EOC) for smart cities. In this context, this paper presents an optimization operation technique for Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS), using control monitor-based Building Information Modeling (BIM) for the efficient operation of the EOC. BIM is one of the approaches that can be used for the visual representation, management, and exchange of information on all aspects of a building. The EOC should be able to efficiently represent the data from the building information, and the operator maintaining it should be able to promptly acquire the data for handling it. This suggests that the control of energy consumption by a Building Automation System (BAS) to maximize building energy efficiency will lead to improved total energy performance, reduced operating costs, and reduced environmental impact.

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides a rapid remote sensing technique to model 3D objects but can also be used to assess the surface condition of structures. In this study, an effective image processing technique is proposed for crack detection on images extracted from the octree structure of TLS data. To efficiently utilize TLS for the surface condition assessment of large structures, a process was constructed to compress the original scanned data based on the octree structure. The point cloud data obtained by TLS was converted into voxel data, and further converted into an octree data structure, which significantly reduced the data size but minimized the loss of resolution to detect cracks on the surface. The compressed data was then used to detect cracks on the surface using a combination of image processing algorithms. The crack detection procedure involved the following main steps: (1) classification of an image into three categories (i.e., background, structural joints and sediments, and surface) using K-means clustering according to color similarity, (2) deletion of non-crack parts on the surface using improved subtraction combined with median filtering and K-means clustering results, (3) detection of major crack objects on the surface based on Otsu&rsquo, s binarization method, and (4) highlighting crack objects by morphological operations. The proposed technique was validated on a spillway wall of a concrete dam structure in South Korea. The scanned data was compressed up to 50% of the original scanned data, while showing good performance in detecting cracks with various shapes.