Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Civil Engineering: Current Practises and Regulations

Abstract

Lately, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been widely preferred in construction industry, and their applications are changing the way construction companies work. Yet, the productivity gap between manufacturing and construction is very high. With the help of UAV’s, construction productivity can be developed. UAV’s has may benefits for the civil engineering discipline and many various applications from inspection of any on-site activity to personal safety operations in construction projects. Site progress can be easily tracked by them and furthermore surveying can be done very fast withous having people at site where might be dangerous. Eventhough current practices of UAV’s use are limited, in the near future this will change not only in construction industry. Drones are gaining popularity not only locally but globally among the stakeholders including clients, contractors and consultant engineers for assessing complex and and detailed situations. Use of UAV’s enables project management professionals understand the problems,making decisions fast and taking required immediate actions. However, state and local regulations are limiting their usages and efficiencies. Construction companies must be aware of the regulations and risks in order to apply UAV technology to their projects. This paper aims to investigate the current practices of UAVs in construction industry by revieweing the publishes academic papers. Furthermore the different regulations set regarding use of drones in different countries different countries and regions such as USA, EU,China and Turkey are also investigated. This research also comprises some legal recommendations to the Turkish authorities which might be beneficial to establish a solid structure for UAV’s.