Photo surveys with drones. The improvement of OSOM+, the systematic monitoring of maritime works

Abstract

OSOM - SYSTEMATIC MONITORING OF MARITIME WORKS - is a monitoring programme developed by the Portuguese National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) to support the decision-making process relative to the maintenance schedule, or even repairing time, of maritime works. The main goal of this programme is the monitoring of the structure’s behaviour, through the analysis of the data collected during monitoring campaigns performed by LNEC. In recent years, the programme has been enhanced with new functionalities, being one of the most important contributions the integration of photogrammetric surveys, with drones, to improve visual inspections. The stage of testing this new source of information has already been completed and, for this reason, drones and photogrammetric methods are fully incorporated in the now-called OSOM+ programme. Nevertheless, there is still place for new studies that will help, in the near future, to make the drone surveys more efficient. This paper presents an ongoing study and some conclusions that are emerging