Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for roofing inspection - Quality and scale assessment

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Roof inspection practices in the construction industry are often limited by safety, accessibility, and site conditions. Roofs typically need to be visually inspected or scanned using thermographic (infrared) technology to detect leaking energy through gaps in the roofs, façade or wet insulation. However, performing such manual inspection is not safe and also is limited to weather condition as well as accessibility. As a result, an inspection service named SkyBEAM is proposed by Tremco that uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with high-resolution thermographic and video cameras to help locate where facilities may be leaking energy or may have wet insulation. Although the superiority of SkyBEAM is clear in terms of greater safety and access benefits, the quality of the results produced by UAVs compared to manual inspection methods needs to be investigated. The accuracy or the range of defects detected by UAVs is not yet known and requires further examination and field data analysis. This research aims at generating a robust data analysis framework to assess the value of SkyBEAM in terms of time savings, quality of inspection and scale of inspection. For this purpose, a study of the current alternative inspection methods in the industry including visual inspection and manual thermographic scanning is to be undertaken on four buildings. The data driven from the images taken by UAVs is then compared with the combination of images taken by the other two methods. The reports generated by each method will also be analyzed and compared in terms of accuracy of the location and the scale of the deficiencies detected as well as details provided for each. The data is then interpreted and analyzed and suggestions for improvements to the current state of the use of UAV in roofing inspection are offered. As a result, the proposed research enhances safety in inspection of buildings by providing improvements in details of inspection and also reporting of the current technologies. Using the improved inspection system provided in this research will enormously increase productivity of the inspection or condition assessment and decrease the associated negative risks.