Preserving our heritage: A photogrammetry-based digital twin framework for monitoring deteriorations of historic structures

Abstract

Preservation of historic structures is a global challenge for governments and site owners, as accumulated deteriorations could weaken the structural integrity. Recent advances in the digital twin in civil and infrastructure engineering have shown great promise in creating virtual models of a physical entity under time-varying physical states. Because of this unique feature, assessing time-varying structural deteriorations become feasible. This paper presents a novel methodological attempt of health monitoring for historic structures by integrating photogrammetry technologies and point cloud processing algorithms into a digital twin framework. To make this viable, virtual models of the physical structure at different inspection times are first created via photogrammetry technologies. Then, a bridge health monitoring method is established to align two virtual models together and further differentiate the changes provoked by structural deterioration. We validate the proposed methodology in a historic stone arch bridge for detecting multiple simulated structural deteriorations.