AI-based risk assessment for construction site disaster preparedness through deep learning-based digital twinning

Abstract

Hurricanes are among the most devastating natural disasters in the United States, causing billions of dollars of property damage and insured losses. During extreme wind events, unsecured objects in jobsites can easily become airborne debris, which results in substantial loss to construction projects and neighboring communities. Towards a systematic disaster preparedness in construction jobsites, this paper presents a novel vision-based digital twinning and threat assessment framework. We encode the context of disaster risk into deep-learning architectures to identify and analyze the characteristics and impacts of potential wind-borne debris in construction site digital twin models. Case studies on nine piles of construction materials are presented to demonstrate and discuss the fidelity of the proposed computational modules. The proposed methods are expected to help provide heads up for practitioners to quickly recognize, localize, and assess potential wind-borne derbies in construction jobsites, and thereby implementing hurricane preparedness in an effective and timely manner.