A Synthetic Review of UAS-Based Facility Condition Monitoring

Facility inspections are mainly carried out through manual visual inspections. However, it is difficult to determine the extent of damages to facilities, and it depends on the subjective opinion of the manager in charge of the monitoring. Additionally, when inspectors inspect facilities that cannot be safely accessed, such as high-rise buildings, there are high risks of fatal accidents. For this reason, the construction industry conducts research into unmanned aircraft system (UAS)-based facility inspections. These studies have been focusing on developing the technologies or processes for using UAS in facility condition monitoring, ranging from infrastructure systems to commercial buildings. This study conducted extensive and synthetic reviews of the recent studies in UAS-based facility monitoring using a preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) method. A total of 32 papers were selected and classified through the types of facilities and the technologies addressed in the studies. This paper analyzes the trends of recent studies by synthesizing the selected papers and consolidates the further directions of UAS applications and studies in facility monitoring domains.