A Review of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Applications in Construction Management: 2016–2021

Abstract

With the rapid advancement of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technologies in recent years, their uses have been increasingly adopted in the architecture, engineering, and construction industries. To satisfy the needs of various types of construction projects, a considerable amount of research work has been performed to implement and refine the operations, safety, and accuracy of UAVs. This paper presents the findings of a comprehensive literature review that focuses on UAV research in construction management during the timeframe of 2016 to 2021. A total of 95 papers were identified and collected from a list of 21 relevant journals and conference proceedings, and were then categorized by their research topic, sensor types, and targeted structures. The results of 47 exemplary studies were reported in two categories, namely UAV uses and construction uses. The research topics identified for UAV uses include algorithm, applications, operations, framework, and training, while research topics identified for construction use include inspection, surveying, safety, and monitoring. The connection between the research topics, sensor types, targeted structures, and other advanced technologies were also discussed. This paper summarizes the current results of UAV research in construction management, reviews the methodology, benefits, and limitations of the reviewed literature, and provides valuable knowledge for the future trend of UAV applications in the civil, infrastructure, and construction industries.

Investigation of the Use of Drones by Construction Professionals in Addressing Built Environment Tasks

“…It operates in a guided fashion that uses cloud computing, storage, and web services [6,20]. The use of drones in military, civilian, and other disciplines has advanced over the years [7,14,21]. Additionally, it has relevance and applications in the fields of engineering, remote sensing, agriculture, surveillance, disaster management and planning [22].…”

“…In order to present the most related literature review, Table 1 shows the highlights of the selected ones. [34] Shows the use of drones to examine human behaviors to get information or data from the air in order to identify disaster victims 7 Edulakanti and Ganguly, 2023 [28] Shows the usefulness of drones to monitor the progress of construction projects Volume 5 Issue 1|2024| 5…”

“…In the construction space, drones are used for many purposes, as they have created various opportunities like data gathering by using high and different levels of automation. Drones also help in reaching inaccessible places on construction sites to get the required information [6,7]. Drones are becoming increasingly applicable in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industries by making construction phases safer in their operations and execution [8].…”

Data Fusion Analysis and Synthesis Framework for Improving Disaster Situation Awareness

“…Nowadays, UAVs are used in many application domains, such as: precision agriculture [28], construction and infrastructure inspection [29,30], and rescue of people [31] and also in the same context of this article-disaster management. For example, a literature review on the application of drones in the disaster management context is presented in [26].…”

Advanced Video-Based Processing for Low-Cost Damage Assessment of Buildings under Seismic Loading in Shaking Table Tests

“…For the above reasons, improving the capability to extract parameters related to structural health from footage taken at a distance by video cameras may play a crucial role in the low-cost and safe monitoring of structures. Video-based methods include applications where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are employed [15,16]. UAV methods for damage detection and quantification mainly focus on the high-resolution visual inspection of structures that allow for the accurate survey of cracks and defects.…”