Cesium Chinese Website: http://cesiumcn.org/ | China Fast Access: http://cesium.coinidea.com/

Cesium technology is revolutionizing the construction industry. The Smart Construction dashboard we developed in partnership with Komatsu enables us to visualize, measure, and analyze construction site progress faster than ever before. Here’s how it works.

Aggregating Different Datasets to Assess Progress

To keep track, site managers must constantly compare the plans provided in CAD designs with what’s actually happening on site, which is captured by data from traditional surveys, drone surveys, and smart construction vehicles (including as-built data and vehicle telemetry).

The Cesium Tools application combines design models with time-stamped real-world data for measurement and progress tracking. Cesium takes these data sources as input, fuses them together to create an up-to-date 3D representation of the work site, and processes them into 3D Tiles so they can be easily shared and streamed.

A DSM and orthoimagery converted into 3D Tiles, overlaid with vector data from line files created in CAD software packages.

Collecting Data

Building the smart construction application requires us to be ready to receive various data types, collected in different ways and at different levels of completeness.

Traditional Surveys

The traditional method of surveying a site uses a probe vehicle to take GPS measurements at a grid of positions across the work site. Collecting data this way takes a day or more, and the collected data is relatively sparse. This data can be compiled into 3D meshes in LandXML, DXF, or other triangle mesh formats.

Drone Surveys

Surveys can also be conducted by drones or UAVs. About once a week, for up to a day at a time, a drone flies over the site taking photos at multiple locations across the work site. Photogrammetry software converts these photos into an overall 3D model of the terrain. Common outputs include point clouds, DTM/DSM terrain data, and orthoimagery.

A point cloud of a construction site in Osaka, Japan, collected by drone, converted into a mesh, and tiled into 3D Tiles by Cesium ion.

Drone surveys are much faster than traditional surveys. For a company in the UK, adopting drone-based data collection combined with Cesium’s 3D tiling capabilities reduced the time from collection to visualization from 3 days to 30 minutes. The measurement results from each method had less than 2% error.

Smart Construction Vehicles

One of the latest trends in construction is machine tracking, either by embedding GPS sensors in construction equipment or attaching aftermarket sensors to them. These sensors track each machine as it moves around the site, providing “as-built” partial terrain data that, when merged with the existing ground, can provide a near real-time picture of the site terrain, typically collected on an hourly basis.

The yellow areas show recent “as-built” data collected from sensor-equipped construction machines, merged with an earlier drone survey of the entire site. Cesium lets you combine and visualize different surfaces at any point in time.

Beyond Visualization

While being able to see what’s happening is valuable, the real value of the Cesium Tools application lies in its analytics capabilities.

A cut-and-fill analysis highlighted with a heatmap, showing how much earthwork needs to be moved and how much has already been moved.

For example, if a project manager needs to send results to a client for billing, they can understand the total percentage of earthwork that has been moved, as well as areas that still need work. Determining the amount of material remaining in inventory is as simple as clicking to create a measurement: the program calculates the volume, weight, and value of the material.

Measuring inventory.

Project managers can also preview routes before traveling by clicking a path and inspecting the slope (as a heatmap or a profile using the 2D cross-section tool).

Terrain slope heatmap.

This is just an overview of the many capabilities powered by Cesium in the Smart Construction app. Visit our construction industry page to watch the video and learn more.

Original link: https://cesium.com/blog/2020/03/30/construction-with-cesium/

Author: Gabby Getz

Comment: The tools and capabilities provided by the Cesium team are increasingly powerful and impressive.

Cesium Chinese Website QQ Group: 807482793

Cesium Chinese Website: http://cesiumcn.org/ | China Fast Access: http://cesium.coinidea.com/