Digital Imaging in Assessment of Construction Project Progress

This paper presents a research effort designed to produce a digital imaging-based method to efficiently assess the level of construction project progress. Cameras are widely used to monitor and record various activities on a construction site. The images produced by the cameras can be processed with digital imaging techniques to help project participants better understand the status of the project. As the first step of this on-going research, this paper focuses on an image segmentation method designed to distinguish objects of interest, such as structural members on a construction site, from other objects in the image. The segmentation method combines an edge-based segmentation method with human knowledge of the construction scene represented by image morphological operations. A promising initial research result is also presented.