A new measurement technique is being developed to measure true nearfield and farfield structural intensity by remote sensing and noncontacting instrumentation. A system composed of a scanning laser vibrometer with computer-controlled optical scanner allows for noncontacting measurement of the amplitude and phase of the vibration velocity of a structural member. The laser vibrometer has a dynamic range of 160 dB and broadband frequency response of up to 25 kHz. The vibrometer is held steady on a seismically isolated optical table and a mirror is positioned accurately by a computer-controlled stepper motor. The measurement of nearfield or farfield structural intensity at a point requires the measurement of the structural velocity at a minimum of four points for a beam and eight points for a plate about that point. Thus the amplitude and phase of the velocity field on the surface of a structure is measured at a fine mesh of discrete number of points. Error analysis is performed to assess the theoretical error introduced by the mesh size, number of points used for evaluating the structural intensity, random phase and amplitude errors, and errors introduced by nonsimultaneous measurements.