Structural integrity management with unmanned aerial vehicles: State-of-the-art review and outlook

Over the last decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used for monitoring construction and operation of civil infrastructure, as well as industrial facilities and power plants. Their operational simplicity along with time-and-cost-related benefits have already rendered them attractive for structural surveying. Nevertheless, the field of UAV research currently lacks a targeted employment of UAVs for Structural Integrity Management (SIM) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). This paper provides an overview about actual developments of UAV technologies, breakthroughs in sensor technologies, SHM and Value of Information analysis, the latter being oriented to facilitate an efficiency assessment of precision and cost dependent information. Relevant literature, as well as research and industrial projects, integrating UAVs and SHM are described and assessed, while monitoring strategies, advanced technologies and related algorithms are discussed with a view to achieving increased Value of UAV-based SHM Information.