Assessing earthquake damages with wearable reality capture

Author:弗兰克Collazo

On Sept. 19, 2017, a powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Mexico City and the surrounding states. The earthquake caused the collapse of several buildings, killing 369 people and injuring more than 6,000. Damaged infrastructure also included destroyed bridges, roads, and water and electricity utilities. Mexico City was the most affected with 228 deaths and 38 buildings collapsed. More than 800 buildings are in red code, meaning that they did not collapse but will be demolished.

To aid in the recovery, national and local emergency management authorities asked Mexico City-based Leica Geosystems staff to safely document the damage using remote sensing, reality capture technologies.

Reality capture’s role in emergency management

这Leica Pegasus:BackpackandLeica Scanstation P40被部署到激光扫描和图像尽可能多的倒塌建筑物，以记录损坏并捕获最新地图，建筑物和基础设施的照片和计划。

Pegasus：背包被证明是无价的，因为它可以迅速safely and easily capture the inaccessible disaster area in 3D and document entire blocks by foot. The ScanStation P40 laser scanned heavily damaged un-collapsed buildings to do structural analysis. All data for collapsed buildings in the most affected district of Mexico City was captured by two employees inunder two hoursand processed on the same day. Critical data was captured before debris and rubble were removed and is now a permanent record in the form of ArcGIS-compatible point clouds and panoramic images.

现在，墨西哥的灾难管理机构在线访问此数据Leica Pegasus:WebViewer，Leica Geosystems的Web查看服务，该服务允许用户通过处理的图像和点云进行导航，分析和协作。

“借助Leica Pegasus的地理参考信息：背包，我们确切地知道每个门，巷子和窗户都在哪里。现在，我可以给我的机组人员准确说明去哪里以及在到达那里之前的期望。没有数据，灾难管理是一个复杂的过程，”said Dr. Armando Aguilar, president of the Commission on Safety and Hygiene and Civil Protection.

使用Pegasus：Backpack拍摄的所有地理参考的全景图像都是有序记录灾难网站，这些灾难将有助于未来的法医调查。使用Pegasus：Webviewer，紧急个人可以在现场看到碎屑和瓦砾之前倒塌的建筑物的确切状态。Leica Geosystems的工作人员捕获的所有信息均已共享，并通过Pegasus Webviewer的网络服务器提供给国家民用保护局和墨西哥当地政府。

使用最大的参考网络访问GNSS数据

大调的ing data collection with the Pegasus:Backpack, the team relied on the new HxGN SmartNet GNSS base stations in Mexico City to immediately process the GNSS data generated by the mobile mapping solution. Thanks to HxGN SmartNet, a satellite positioning service, GNSS data was available in real time and the team didn’t have to wait about 24 hours to download data from the closest Mexico City public GNSS base stations.

“We finished the installation of the first phase of HxGN SmartNet Mexico just before the earthquake. We were very glad to have the base station available in the aftermath of this event for immediate use to our team for Pegasus:Backpack post processing. We are launching the subscription service in the country early 2018,”said Cinthia Salinas, HxGN SmartNet coordinator for MexAm region.

“We are also receiving a lot of concrete interest for developing HxGN SmartNet in Central and South America. We anticipate HxGN SmartNet Mexico will be the first of many HxGN SmartNet stations to be developed throughout Latin America over the next few years,”added Jill Johnson, HxGN SmartNet senior project engineer for NAFTA region.

We express our sincerest condolences for Mexico City, and we keep all of those affected by the earthquake in our daily thoughts.