Application of Visualization Techniques for Construction Progress Monitoring

For a successful construction project, as-built progress should be constantly monitored and compared with the as-planned construction progress and real-time corrective actions should be taken in case of observed discrepancies. Current media representing these discrepancies (e.g. charts, graphs and still photos) may not facilitate the communication of progress information clearly and quickly which makes the process time-consuming and distracts decision makers from important task of corrective decision making. A series of conceptual visualization techniques (e.g. augmented reality, color and color gradient) have been recently developed to facilitate the communication of progress information and decision making on corrective actions. In this paper, several semi-automated vision-based approaches are applied to further improve and facilitate these processes. To that end, camera matching and registration of the as-planned model with as-built photograph, analyzing the progress status through a material-based detection technique and generation of an occlusion-free photograph are presented.