Spherical imaging and virtual environments for structural health monitoring

Thorough documentation is pivotal in the life cycle management and performance monitoring of infrastructure. As technology continues to progress, 3D models and virtual environments are becoming increasingly popular for designing or documenting a structure. These models and environments can be optimized for life cycle management if they are paired with current information about a structure including past monitoring results and possible interventions. The work presented here reflects a methodology and digital workflow, which uses 360 degree spherical imaging as well as novel tools for virtually experiencing infrastructure and associated data. This project was tested on a real-world case study, Streicker Bridge in Princeton, NJ, USA. Streicker Bridge is a pedestrian footbridge spanning 350 feet, which opened in 2010. This bridge has been monitored since construction began in 2008 using fiber-optic strain gauges. The bridge environment was captured utilizing the Ricoh Theta spherical imaging camera and processed utilizing the Kolor Panotour virtual environment software. The virtual environment of Streicker Bridge was made interactive by adding responsive points of interest; these points enable certain types of damage to be highlighted and explored for future maintenance and life cycle management. Exploration of the damage in the virtual environment include additional 2D images which accentuate aspects of structural damage, hyperlinks to papers associated with this work, as well as additional forms of metadata. The results of this research will be recommendations for how the different groups working together on the life cycle management and performance of the bridge can document their site and meaningfully convey data to the appropriate audiences.